Jo Christie-Smith

Tying up loose ends...

2010-10-17T22:24:00.003+01:00

I haven't posted in nearly two months and in fact, my posts have been few and far between for at least the last year.

I wish I had more time to blog but with full time work, a time hungry allotment and a masters law degree in the evenings it's become an idle dream!

So, I've made a decision that I'm not going to blog for a while and probably not until I complete my Law Masters.

I will continue to Twitter though; my social network de choix!!!

Is the Campaign for Gender Balance trying to kid us (or just themselves?)

2010-09-07T19:12:00.005+01:00

In its report to Conference[1] the Campaign for Gender Balance (CFGB) states that it knows what works. No, really, in the year that we actually reduced the number of women in parliament, it says that it knows what works!

It is beyond my comprehension that the CFGB can suggest this when we have fewer female MPs than ever in Parliament. At some point the CFGB has to understand that it is the outcome not the activity that really counts. That we would have done better if things had been different is not a response worthy of the intelligent & sensible heads running the CFGB.

Let's stop kidding ourselves that the route to greater female representation lies solely in encouragement & mentoring - handy as they are for some women - and look at some things that actually do work, in deed, on the evidence the only thing that has ever worked in a national parliament and that is quotas. To think we'll get there with encouragement and a bit of training is to follow the blind ideology that the only way to be fair and liberal is to ignore the difference that quotas make & place ambitions of the numerous but unremarkable male party hack above the difference that women and ethnic minorities in power would make to the well being of the whole planet.

The CFGB is in danger of becoming window dressing for a party that pays lip service to female representation. Even an 'A’ list like the Tories had, would be better that the current restricted scope of the Campaign for Gender Balance. Indeed if the CFGB is a mentoring programme then the ‘A’ list could be seen as the first part of a sponsorship programme: an informed assessment of those potential candidates that warrant sponsorship.

In this month’s Harvard Business Review (thanks to Neil Stockley and Shawn Callahan from Anecdote for the hat tip) there is a fascinating article that points out that the difference between men and women's upward trajectory in business is that women get mentored and men get sponsored.

This means that it’s still men getting most of the promotions or, translated into what we Lib Dems are dealing with, getting the positions of power, seats in Parliament, the government and in the Cabinet.

If we’re not as a party ready to countenance quotas for parliament (which is weird because we don’t seem to have much of an issue when our party lists for less powerful institutions have quotas) then let’s stop pretending that a reduction in female MPs is evidence of mentoring working and think again. Why don’t we try a formal programme of sponsorship, accessed via some sort of assessment programme for our very best female, male, black, minority ethnic and white candidates? And lets make sure that list is representative of the country!

Because, can we really say, in all honesty, that those Lib Dem men, whom are now cabinet ministers, were only mentored? No, they were sponsored into parliament, backed by key influencers and given their break, their opportunity on the basis of their potential.

The point of formal sponsorship programmes, rather the informal ones that got our guys into the cabinet, is that they seek to overcome the ‘who you know’ that the privileged few benefit from. They provide links (on the basis of merit) with influential leaders within the organisation who, importantly, are required to deliver.

The Campaign for Gender Balance suffers from having a very restricted scope, no doubt designed to stop any move towards quotas or all women shortlists. There is not a year that has gone by that they haven't failed most if not all of their self set targets. It is my view that, as constituted, they are doomed to failure as they have to ignore the evidence that the only thing that has ever got near 30% women into national parliaments is quotas either at party or constitutional level.

Until we move away from this straight jacket we will never be taken seriously by the very people we need in positions of power that will make us not just look diverse but be diverse.

[1] Yes, I know there is an opportunity to ask questions of the Report. The deadline for sending in questions for Federal Reports at Conference was 12 noon on Monday the 6th; a fact that I only remembered just before 12 midnight on Monday the 6th.

Still, judging by the very, very, few people who tend to be in the conference hall for the Campaign for Gender Balance and Diversity Engagement Groups reports in previous years, I might just reach a wider audience with a blog!

Posted via email from jochristiesmith's posterous

The Boris Bike*

2010-07-26T17:17:00.001+01:00

I've just signed up as an annual member of the Barclays (yawn, yawn - my ex-employer is following me around) Cycle Hire Scheme. I think I need to use it for less than half an hour once a week for that to pay for itself.

I'm quite excited about it.

But, jolly though it will be (see how I can't help myself slipping into Borisisms), I am a little worried that its going to be stopping people from walking rather than getting them out of the cars.

My plan is to use the BCHS (*as Leo Hickman suggests, we must come up with a nickname soon) from Warren Street Tube to Birkbeck College and back again. Not a massive journey but one that is irritatingly long when I'm late for a lecture or on the way home from one in the cold dark winter and just wanting to get home. I think it will shave 10-15 minutes of my return journey and frankly, during term time, that's a precious 10-15 minutes.

This journey is too short for public transport so there'll be no reduction of congestion apart from on the pavements.

I have to say I'm underwhelmed by the cycle highways - really you need to seperate the cyclists from the traffic to make people like me feel safe doing longer journeys on major trunk roads.

And I'm impatient for whatever is going to happen utside of central London for local cycling, so that people no longer get in their cars to buy a couple of forgotten items at the supermarket etc, but get on a bike.

If course, if cycling is to come to Crystal Palalce in any sustainable kind of way, I'm also looking forward to the cycle ski-lift type thing that will be required to wynh all us moderatley fit people back up the hill!

*Could I ever sign up to a nick name such as the Boris Bike? I don't think so, but I'll have a couple of gos and see what I can come up with - perhaps experience will provide inspiration!

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Nothing to do with politics...

2010-05-22T10:50:00.001+01:00

This has nothing to do with poltics and hat tip to Alison Wheeler who put this up on her blog; this is just sooooo cute!

<p>Meet the sloths from Amphibian Avenger on Vimeo.</p>

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Diane Abbott, Diversity and the Labour leadership...

2010-05-20T09:33:00.001+01:00

Well, as Evan Davies said on his twitter feed just before she came into the studio, Diane Abbott is always good value!

And the race for the Labour leadership will definitely look more diverse now that t she has entered it. And she will indeed have an impact on the discussion and issues raised. And she has 'earned' her place on the short-list, as Simon Wooley says in the Guardian this morning. But even he's not suggesting she's actually going to become the Labour leader.

She's not going to win, everyone knows that and there's the rub. What will happen is that Labour will be able to claim that their leadership contest was diverse and so feel no need to actually deal with the real issues that underpin why there are not more women at the most senior level in politics.

Blimey, I'm a party pooper, aren't I?

I don't blame Diane Abbott, as a woman, prominent in a political party she is, like Harriet Harman and Yvette Cooper, one of the few that everybody looks to when searching for more diversity. 'Why aren't there more women standing?', goes up the call and the weight of being a representative woman falls on their shoulders yet again. The issue is always with women and ethnic minorities not coming through and putting themselves forward, isn't it?

Except that those of us who have put any thought into this know there's loads of reasons, perfectly valid and perfectly changeable, if only there was establishment will, underpinning why more of us do not come forward.

In the end, it's easier to blame the group who are under represented and no doubt fed up with this, Diane Abbott has thrown her hat in the ring. She probably hopes, no doubt amongst other things, to give lie to the line: women don't have power because they don't come forward.

I say, we're doomed if we do, and doomed if we don't. As a woman, and I am one, I have absolute confidence of my ability to be short-listed as a candidate - in fact I have, loads of times, including making it through Liberal Democrat star chamber to make it onto the Bromley & Chislehurst by-election short-list. But getting onto the short-list means nothing; it only counts if you can and do win. My confidence in my ability to actually win is no longer as all conquering as it once was!

In the Lib Dems we have rules about gender equality on short-lists, meaning selection committees scour the country looking for women to shortlist; and I have been asked numerous time to stand, to provide the gender balance required, so that the process to select the favoured candidate can go ahead. As the difficulty is with so many 'secondary' targets, people work to achieving them, not the actual desired outcome that the target has been put there to facilitate.

So, having women and ethnic minorities make it to the short-list, whether they can win or not, only disguises the fact the only serious contenders for the Labour leadership are male and pale.

And so, leads us to a situation where less is likely to be done about it than if there were none. There is no longer an outcry because there are no women in the Labour leadership contest. Job done.

I wish Diane Abbott well in her campaign and feel sure that she will raise issues that might not have been raised if left to the men.

And there is of course the role model function. DIane Abbott standing may well help with that; I posed a question on whether Sarah Palin's vice presidency was net good or bad for women a couple of years ago. And I'm still not sure; Dianne Abbott is not going to be as polarising as Sarah Palin (hopefully/obviously) but I can't help feeling that Obama's real strength as a role model is because he won the competition, not because he was a candidate on a short-list.

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Where I’m right and Boris is wrong…

2010-05-14T16:42:00.002+01:00

I have always thought the development of the new Routemaster Bus was a mad, bad waste of time and effort when London has so many more pressing concerns.

And now it seems I’m not the only one; in a recent TFL survey creating the new Routemaster was deemed to be one of the least important projects to be undertaken in London. Only 18% of people thought it was a priority, as Adam points out.

Well, there’s a surprise!

I wonder if Boris is getting bored of being Mayor yet? After all he’s no longer the most powerful Conservative in the country now; should we be expecting him to give up on London and try and get into a safe Tory seat back in Parliament instead?

It wouldn’t surprise me.

Big Sigh I’m all cross now…grrrr….

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On sleep and the constitution…

2010-05-13T11:17:00.001+01:00

Is this the first morning in four or five weeks that anybody, now involved in the government of this country, has woken up after an even vaguely decent nights sleep?

I can’t help thinking that I’d rather everybody got a bit more sleep around these occasions. I’m not the only one: only this March, in the Justice Select Committee oral evidence sessions even Lord Butler of Brockwell (and as he used to be Cabinet Secretary, he knows a thing or two about this) said:

“I think the arrangements in Britain for the formation of a new government after an election are unwisely frantic because—I have seen this, and Lord Turnbull has seen it—if it is a new Prime Minister, when the new Prime Minister comes in, he or she comes in in circumstances where they have had a long campaign; they may have had to sit up most of the night waiting for their election results, they then may have to travel to London, and they arrive in a state of exhaustion. To then have to make decisions that are crucial for the country, including the appointments of your main lieutenants in the first few hours, and a lot of other important decisions, has never seemed to me to be particularly wise, nor does it seem to me to be necessary. It is part of a drama that we have got used to that everybody enjoys, and it is difficult to break.”

And of course, it’s been worse this time as they’ve all had 5 days of discussion followed by yesterday’s dizzying day of action.

I can’t help suspecting the reason it happens is the macho, testosterone driven political culture that we have; noting, of course, that women can be susceptible to that culture too. But not me! I love sleep. Fascinated by politics as I am on May 6^th I left the all night vigil in front of the telly to my husband and the dog.

Why is everybody the media and political activists so impatient to get to an answer that they’d rather have the sleep deprived elected such important decisions than alert ones? Is knowing one day later really going to make the difference in a year’s time?

Uncertainty is a function of changing governments and I think the last week proves that the markets do have more patience that we, or the media, gave them credit for. If we planned to make the change over of government slightly less frenetic, say giving them a week to change or even two weeks I think it would be better for everyone. After all in the US they give 2 months for the administration to change and the world doesn’t fall in then, either.

I am amazed and in awe of those who have negotiated this coalition government on such little sleep. I think they have managed rather better than the media, whose tempers have become frayed on occasion in the last week.

So, Sir Gus, when you finish the Cabinet Manual (well done for Draft Chapter 6, by the way), do you think you could add in an itsy bitsy convention around taking more time, so that everybody that needs to can get a bit more sleep?

And Nick, as you are now Deputy Prime Minster with responsibility for Political Reform, could you add the changes to your to do list too?

Just don’t stay up all night to get it done!

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Our Lib Dem Democratic Deficit

2010-05-12T12:09:00.004+01:00

I am on the whole delighted today; amazed that a man, whom I knew had something good going for him from the moment I met him, that I drove about for a day in the back of my car during his party leadership campaign, is now Deputy Prime Minster. I suspect both car and driver have improved in quality somewhat! Well done, Nick! Hooray!

However, there is one big fly in the ointment for me and that is what looks to be like the lack of women in this new coalition government. An historic, new type of government and it’s still white, middle class men taking almost every plum job. The exception, as just announced is Theresa May, who seems to have two jobs Home Secretary and Women and Equalities. That to me, suggests that she’s the going to be the only female cabinet minster; let’s hope I’m wrong.

Oh dear!

Of course, you can’t put many more women into the Cabinet if you don’t have enough female MPs in the first place.

The number of Conservative female MPs has gone up but the number of Labour and Lib Dem female MPs has gone down. The only new female Liberal Democrat MP that we have is the wonderful Tessa Munt. However, Tessa has been standing for election for many, many years, starting off in the Ipswich by-election in 2001. So, it has to be said that despite the very best efforts of the Campaign for Gender Balance and Women Liberal Democrats that we have made no progress, in terms of outcomes in getting new women into parliament.

And you can’t get more women into parliament if you don’t have enough female PPCs in the first place. We didn’t even manage to get more women standing as PPCs: only 22% in 2010, compared to 23% in 2005.

Of course, the issues in why we don’t have more women as PPCs are structural – politics does not fit with the reality of many women’s lives, let alone that the whole thing seems to be a testosterone fuelled slanging match. Plus, the way to progress through the Liberal Democrats and get to the point that you can stand in a serious seat, also discourages many other potential female PPCs. We make a difficult journey, even more difficult!

I know that all PPCs make sacrifices and compromises; but I rather suspect that there are more compromises to be made by women, especially those with young families. Their male counterparts don’t have it easy, just easier.

This is a real shame as our policies that impact women are really good and we have made definite progress there.

As Ceri Goddard from the Fawcett Society said in the Guardian at the end of April:

"They have the most radical proposals of all the parties on issues such as equal pay audits and parental leave, but they haven't acknowledged the huge democratic deficit – their radicalism doesn't extend to challenging the status quo."

Nick Clegg has given us another election to sort it out; I hope that we don’t need another election I hope we get to grips with the fact that ‘encouragement’ and ‘training’ is not going to change the game and am sure that we will need to be far more radical in addressing this problem than we have ever been so far!

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Is this really a once in a generation opportunity?

2010-05-10T10:35:00.001+01:00

It's very hard for us LIb Dems and those who are desperate, let's face it, for full scale political reform to feel that, as it has been our first chance to use our position as a pivot party in 34 years that it will be our last chance to use our position as a pivot party for the next 24 years. The instinct therefore is to refuse to go into a coalition unless we get a promise of a referendum; unless we finally get what we were supposed to have got 13 years ago, if only Labour hadn't reneged on the deal.

Of course, that would be the best outcome. But it's a very hard ask of the Tory negotiating team and we should be looking to see what package of measures could still halt this stitch up between Labour and the Conservative in its track. It may be that one hung parliament isn't enough but two might be.

The eminent constitutionalist David Butler has oft suggested that transformational voting reform could take two hung parliaments to achieve, two consecutive hung parliaments.

Although we haven't had a hung parliament for a long time, that may not be the case in the future.

Over the last 50 years there has been a consistent decline in people voting for either Labour and Conservative, from 97% in 1951 culminating with less that two thirds of voters in the 2010 election. This means that hung parliaments are for more likely in the future.

Of course, the problem is that where the Prime Minister can, within a few parameters, can hold a General Election at a time of their choosing they will of course try and pick the point where a hung parliament is least likely.

But what would happen if the Conservatives agreed to fixed term parliaments? Well, the PM would no longer be able to manage the timing in their favour and hung parliaments would, on top of the psephological changes already working in favour of hung parliaments, again become more frequent.

The dynamics of election calling tactics would be changed forever.

I think we should go for as much as we can get; I think we need more that just fixed term parliaments but I also think that political reform that provides an environment to create that second hung parliament leading to electoral reform is quite a prize and we should be wary of walking away from it.

I worry that all those who want electoral reform seem to be equating the Liberal Democrats raison d'etre with voting reform; while important we are not a one policy party. It is unlikely however, that without a healthy vibrant Liberal Democrats that we will ever get voting reform as Labour's commitment to it comes and goes in line with their proximity to power. So, do not make the Liberal Democrats succeed or fall on this one negotiation and this one election.

A coalition with the Tories, would allow us to reign in the worst excesses of conservatism, in all sorts of policy areas including political reform and if set up for a relatively long period help create the economic stability that this country needs. Making a coalition work, on Britain's journey towards proportional representation, is as important as the concessions that we win from that coalition.

Coalition governments are risky in many other ways for support parties, whether or not their in it for constitutional reform, but could bring enormous benefits to the people of the United Kingdom; I'm not normally the type to be patient but I think that all of us who want a proportional voting system should look to the long game and not throw out the baby with the bathwater.

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Helping the Tories deliver...

2010-05-09T17:19:00.001+01:00

If Benedict Brogan's report on the offer to Tory MPs of a free vote in parliament on an Electoral Reform referendum is true then that is a neat piece of work done by the joint negotiation teams.

Not only does the Lib Dem team have to ensure that the Liberal Democrats get what they want in return for a formal coalition with the Conservatives (I might have to stop calling them the Tories, I fear, as to me at least, it's a pejorative term) but they have to do as much as they can to help the Conservatives deliver a deal that is palatable to their own party.

At first glance, the parliamentary maths suggests that this is a bit of a pig in a poke, as Tories and pro FPTP Labour MPs could vote down any legislation to run a referendum but that ignores the payroll vote.

This of course would only work for the LIb Dems if Cameron made government jobs dependant on support for a referendum - allowing those Tory MPs who feel sooo strongly about PR to follow their conscience whilst allowing other Tory MPs to follow their career.

It would also give groups such a Power2010 to ramp up the campaign and ensure a national conversation. They already have the momentum as I don't see any keep FPTP demonstrations going on!

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Don't let anybody tell you thing can't be different...

2010-04-30T18:27:00.001+01:00

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The path to a people's parliament

2010-04-29T18:08:00.001+01:00

Just over two weeks ago, I sat in the LBC 97.3 studios in Leicester Square being told by the very jolly Tory Bear that the Lib Dems were irrelevant! Well, not so irrelevant now, are they Mr Bear?!!

That was at the height of Tory complacency about the election, the night before the first debate after which it became clear to everyone that Nick Clegg and the Lib Dems if given a fair hearing are a force to be reckoned with.

There is so much excitement about the new politics. There is, at the moment a feeling that everything could all be about to change, that the two party duopoly has gone for good.

Of course, the desire for a more representative parliament delivered through a proportional voting system isn't the sole preserve of Liberal Democrats; there are Labour, Green and even a few Tory supporters that believe in it. But the path to such a people's parliament will be a long one and we will all have to adapt the way we do politics to it.

Balanced parliament means political parties have work together; so we are going to have to set aside our tribal loyalties, learn to breath without our nose pegs and be prepared to talk to anybody. Yes, even Tories perhaps or maybe even Gordon Brown (breathe 1, 3, 3 ,4, breathe, 1,2,3,4..scary thought, I know)

Balanced parliaments and coalitions are about creating outcomes, not throwing your toys out of the pram because you can't bear the idea of your political enemies benefiting in any way.

So, allow Nick, who has done us all so proud in the last few weeks to do his stuff. Don't tell him now what he can and can't do a deal with; don't tell him who he should and shouldn't talk to.

And stop going on about the triple lock! Crikey, I like the fact that the Liberal Democrats are a democratic party as much as the next Lib Dem but it is only a fall back position. For it to be invoked there would have to be a massive split in the parliamentary party and I think it's highly unlikely that there will be a split in the parliamentary party around who to talk to in the event of a parliament with no overall majority.

Any political geek who thinks she or he's going to have a direct influence on any coalition agreements is, well, over-egging their part in the pudding.

Every leader has to take his (or hopefully one day, her) party with them when negotiating with other parties. The triple lock is just a formalisation of what all three of the Leaders will have to do. Neither Cameron or Brown would be able to get very far without the support of their parliamentary party.

After all, have you not noticed that Nick has already set out what the terms of negotiation will be via his four priorities?

He's set out the terms of any negotiations and set the red line which cannot be crossed of electoral reform as his backstop.

Not one of us knows what the electoral map and mathematics are going to look like come May 7th, so stop speculating and let Nick get on with what he is doing brilliantly: holding his and the party's nerve for another week!

Go Nick!!

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Making your mind up!

2010-04-20T13:16:00.002+01:00

Oh, this is fab! Well done the team at Total Politics for putting this together!

Life with the LIb Dems in Government

2010-04-19T11:07:00.002+01:00

Liberalism is at root an optimistic philosophy, free from the fear that Conservatism seeks to propagate.

2010-04-14T10:42:00.003+01:00

It's Lib Dem Manifesto Day and here it is!

OK, the width of the video choice bit doesn't fit my template but hey, I should understand how to change the code so that it does!

Obviously I'm all for our 4 key priorities but I lurve the manifesto page on the website, I'm off to find out how to download the video onto my iPhone!

Political Wives

2010-04-10T11:19:00.004+01:00

What a blinder! Miriam Gonzales Durantez is not giving up her very important post at DLA Piper to follow her husband around on the campaign trail; this is great news as it breaks the convention that if you are a woman married to a politician, that is your primary identity and everything else you do comes second

Even Mumsnet thinks it's great that Miriam has drawn the line at weekend campaigning only.

So, in insisting that she's not to be an electoral asset, she in fact becomes an electoral asset. One where principles and political strategy helpfully complement each other!

Me on Sky News

2009-12-21T12:39:00.003Z

I was back doing my regular slot on Sky News last week - first time in ages but then doing a Masters at Law, in the evening, whilst working full time does rather get in the way of everything, including blogging!

Parliament finally realises that women with young children work there too!

2009-12-18T10:13:00.004Z

After 20 years of campaigning, it seems that parliament has finally been persuaded that the shame of having a shooting gallery but no childcare facility is its shame!

40 places in a parliamentary nursery doesn't seem alot to me, but it is a start and hopefully will make it easier for parents with young children, and particularly their mothers, to take a more proportionate part in our democracy and government.

It's a small step but an important step in the change of culture that we so desperately need in the practice of our politics. Hooray for Speaker Bercow and all the campaigners!

ASA uphold complaint against airbrushing! Hooray!

2009-12-16T08:48:00.003Z

Jo Swinson has been gracing radio and TV in the past 24 hours as the Advertising Standards Authority has upheld the large number of complaints about the Twiggy advert.

This is great news - there is no reason why we should have women's and young girls body image dictated by large multinational corporations. Twiggy looks great without retouching, as do many, many older women.

Plus, has anybody noticed that very few women don't die there hair now when they start to go grey. I think grey hair looks great on women! Why are women not allowed to be old and beautiful any more?

So, if you want to know more about the campaign for real women the take a look at the facebook group for a start!

Real Women and Real Cultural Change

2009-09-19T14:40:00.000+01:00

I'm down in Bournemouth for the conference and have just spent the morning perfecting a speech in the Real Women Policy Debate this afternoon.

It looks like it's going to be a debate over subscribed with speakers and there's at least 3 amendments and a separate vote!

Here are links to the policy paper itself and conference extra which has the amendment 2 to I speaking against.

I'm definitely in favour of the motion, and hoping to speak against Amendment 2 in particular - so here is my speech, just in case I don't get to give it!

Friends,

I am delighted to support this innovative and practical policy paper, because it re affirms our commitment to freedom, choice and true liberal values.

But Amendment Two would undermine that commitment.

If we pass this amendment, we’ll be saying :

‘We see there’s a problem with media images, body image and eating disorders but we don’t want to do anything about it, except to cross our fingers and hope that the problem will go away all by itself’.

What sort of policy is that?

Let’s be clear: images of women are manipulated in advertising in order to make more sales and revenue for large corporations.

Where that harms people, liberals must take positive action.

Time and time again over the past decade, research has shown that from as early as age 5 young girls feel under pressure to be slim and have a perfect body.

The publication ‘Under ten and Under Pressure’ , put out by the Girl Guides Association – that bastion of radical feminism! - found that ‘Girls Between Seven and Ten Believe being Slim and Pretty Makes you Clever, Happy and Popular’

In research by Field et al in 1999, nearly 2 in 3 of 500 girls aged between 9 and 17 agreed with the statement “pictures of women in magazines influence what you think is the perfect shape”

And 1 in 2 of the girls agreed that “Pictures of women in magazines make you want to lose weight.

The policy paper addresses this harm in a thoroughly liberal way, by providing consumers with information on how much images have been digitally manipulated; so that people can know how real or fake they are.

We’ve supported this kind of consumer empowerment before.

To help mitigate the harm of climate change we have laws requiring manufacturers to provide us with information about how energy efficient their fridges are.

Yes, the issues are complicated but now there is a simple set of categories.

So we are all empowered to make an informed choice about energy efficiency.

Yes, the process of airbrushing may also be complex.

Yet, it is entirely possible to come up with some useful guidelines.

Commonsense would ensure that what was being regulated was the manipulation of body images, not the benign change of lighting or removal of shadows.

And, just as the labelling of fridges has changed the behaviour of fridge manufacturers, so the labelling of digitally manipulated images will change the behaviour of advertisers.

What we’re talking about here is cultural change ; changing behaviours.

One reason digital manipulation works is that we don’t always know when it's been done.

If we make sure that advertisers are open and honest about it, what company will want to admit that the only way it can sell it’s products is by using fake pictures?

But if you don’t require advertisers to provide the information in the first place, you don’t get the cultural change we need.

They will have no incentive to change.

As advertising drives the profitability of magazines, newspapers and television, where they go, editorial will follow.

We didn’t cross our fingers and hope for cultural change when it came to energy efficiency of fridges, why should we do it about the well-being and self-esteem of young women and girls?

Conference, this is a liberal approach to achieving cultural change!

Yes, if a five year old is reading Cosmo then she will see digitally manipulated photos.

but if her parents choose to protect her, they will know where the safe places are.

So, Cosmo Girl, aimed directly at the teen market should help young women feel good about themselves; they shouldn’t decide they’re fat at the age of 12!

Conference, let’s make a real difference to young girls and women’s lives:

Support the motion and reject amendment two.

It's equality not growth that makes the difference..

2009-09-14T12:21:00.006+01:00

I went to an excellent garden party at Hackney Liberal Democrats yesterday afternoon where I learnt that there is solid data that supports the notion that unequal societies are worse for everybody, whether the Lib Dems narrative does or doesn't support that and not to attempt to drive in London on a Sunday. Ever.

Geoffrey J Payne (as opposed to Geoff Payne) is very good at putting together the most interesting speaking events and he had invited Richard Wilkinson & Kate Pickett, the author of 'the Spirit Level: Why more equal societies almost always do better' and my husband*, Neil Stockley, on the extent to which the Lib Dems current narrative is one of equality. Neil will be putting what he had to say about our narrative (the upshot being our narrative is not really one of equality, even though our policies support one) on his blog in the next few days.

If you haven't had a look a The Spirit Level yet, I thoroughly recommend you do you can buy it here (via the Lib Dem affinty scheme) or here: especially if you're of the persuasion that it's growth that counts and that as long as those at the top are continuing to get wealthier it will improve things for everybody (i.e. especially if you are a Tory).

It doesn't.

In fact key things that I took from the talk were:

Once you get past a certain amount of wealth (ie. where the richest, most developed countries already are) increased growth makes no difference to overall well being (life expectancy, imprisonment rates etc, etc).
That increased equality means greater well being, not just for the poorest in society but for the richest. So the rich in more equal societies are better off (or rather, have increased levels of well being) than the rich in less equal societies, even though they may not have as much money or purchasing power as the rich in more unequal societies.
The UK is doing really badly and massive increased expenditure hasn't made that much difference.
So is New Zealand...

Don't just take my word for it - go and have a look at the Equality Trust and look at the stats - they're compelling, to say the least.

*novelty value of saying or writing 'my husband' has yet to wear off; perhaps it never will!!

What's it going to be, Gordon? Yes or No?

2009-09-02T13:27:00.003+01:00

Sky News has started a campaign for a leadership debate come the General Election. Something never before done on UK TV.

Cameron jumped right in and said yes. Why wouldn't he? He comes over quite well on TV and certainly belies (I think) what most of the Tory parliamentary party are like. I think, because even though he tries to act like he's not, he really is awfully posh and he needs to take care that he doesn't come across as too pompous.

Nick, agreed on Sky News Sunrise programme this morning that he would. Again, why not - Nick is after becoming an increasingly polished media performer? And whilst it is prefectly possible to be a Liberal Democrat and pompous, Nick is definitely not! He's great (can you tell I'm a fan) - he just needs to make sure that he talks in stories rather than lists of policies.

And Gordon, he'll probably hide behind the lack of precedence in his attempts to avoid it. Because, let's face it; he's going to be rubbish! It's a shame because when he's really smiling, he has a lovely smile: but he's no good at putting it on and it just turns out like a grimace. What's really going to undo him is that he's a numbers man and in defensive mode he's just going to deafen us all with statistics and we will probably stop listening even before he's opened his mouth.

As Mark says on Lib Dem Voice - there's nothing to stop Sky going ahead even if Gordon Brown doesn't take part, but I think, in the end, even though he has nothing to gain from taking part in a TV debate, Labour still has quite a lot to lose by being the ones that refuse to play. And as for it being bad for democracy: pah! If that's the case, then TV is bad for democracy! It's true not all talented TV performers would make good leaders but good leaders need to be able to communicate with voters over the medium of the age; which is still, for most people of voting age the TV.

And yes, takling of TV, I'm on SkyNews.Com this evening; on the 'buzz' along with Jonathan Isaby from Conservative Home and a Labour bod (will say who, when I know) discussing the pros and cons!

Well, done Sky for just doing it!

On bicycle's, on Boris

2009-08-19T09:09:00.004+01:00

Having finally gotten around to reading the excellent Dave Hill newsletter I see we are ever closer to having our own version of the velib in London, as part of Boris' legacy of his first, and hopefully, final term.

I'm all for a velib type scheme, it was in fact a Lib Dem policy going into the last Mayoral elections but I do have some reservations about whether London is ready for such a scheme.

Firstly, it's due to start in central London only - which means that it, like most of the other city schemes across the world, will be used mostly by tourists, rather than Londoners (who will still have their travelcards and therefore have no financial incentive to use velib) but it will be paid for by Londoners.

Secondly, are the roads in central London ready for a few thousand wobbly tourists who are coming to terms with cycling on the left? I don't cycle in central Lonond because I find it far too scary. I'm not ging up there until they have proper cycle lanes, with phsical barriers (as in a raised curb) between me and the lorries; so what's it going to be like for the tourists. We don't have the wide boulevards of Paris, in London (obviously). So, in addition to the bike scheme, more money needs to be spent on improving cycle lanes.

And lastly, although most of these schemes have ended up going out into the suburbs, wouldn't it have been better to start there? After all the majority of the very short journeys that are made by car now, and that we want to stop are in outer London, not inner London. Getting people out of their cars and onto a bike for a trip to the butchers on Lordship Lane will surely make a greater difference to people's quality of life?

So, none of these problems I have raised are insurmountable, and I am in principle in favour of a velib type scheme - however, if it is going to benefit all Londoners and not just be a bit of fancy window dressing then it needs to be better thought through.

We're not in Afghanistan to protect women's rights...

2009-08-18T14:25:00.002+01:00

I watched one of the best Panorama's I've ever seen last night (doesn't Jeremy Vine have the easiest job in television - how much does he get paid for that topping and tailing?).

And I'm not the only one thinking about Afghanistan today, as Iain Dale has noticed, Sunny Hundal has done a very interesting post on the subject on Pickled Politics.

It was on the subject of Afghanistan and how despite 'so-called' democracy women are still treated abominably. In Herat on one day four women, in separate incidents, set themselves on fire to get away from their husbands.

They had a lady, whose teenage son had a British soldier killed in Afghanistan watch the film brought back from Afghanistan and ask her whether it's still right the the UK should be in Afghanistan - whether in fact, her son had dies in vain?

She said, that it was, that was important that we helped change Afghanistan given the treatment of women.

But that's the wrong thing to show her because we are not and never have been in Afghanistan to help the women who live there.

We're in Afghanistan for reasons of national security. The Taliban and Al Qaeda base themselves in that region on the Afghanistan/Pakistan borders (must I really call it AfPak?) and from there they plot and train people to bomb and harm British, American and other nationalities in their own countries and abroad.

It's right that the programme concentrates on the efficacy of aid going into Afghanistan and how much of it falls prey to corruption. But the only reason we give aid and the only reason we risk our soldiers lives is to shore up our own national security.

After all, we'd never gone near Basra if we really cared about women's rights and security in Iraq.

And nor would we be busy helping out British Aerospace continue to bribe and fund the decadent lifestyles of the Princes of Saud by dropping fraud enquiries.

Nope, the question of whether we pull our troops out of Afghanistan should be tested against the case for putting them in there in the first place. I foresee in the next few weeks some Lib Dem hand wringing about our role in Afghanistan, after all, everybody else is. Personally, I would prefer we sorted out Al Qaeda and the Taliban so they couldn't bomb us, and so, think we ought to keep the in there until they are incapacitated (I did International Relations at Uni not strategic studies, so I'm in no position to take a view on whether this is the best way to beat Al Qaeda - I get to define the end state without worrying about the military delivery of such an end state!).

Let's not kid ourselves that anything about UK foreign policy in central Asia or the middle east has anything to do with women's rights - it doesn't and never has.

Which is not to say that I think the that's the way it should be - I was really pleased when Labour came in in 1997 and Robin Cook put forward an ethical foreign policy and I have been very proud of Vince when he has challenged the decision to stop the investigation of the SFO into BAE by Tony Blair.

I just think we should be clear on whether UK foreign policy is working with an ethical dimension or not and our presence in Afghanistan has nothing to do with ethics and everything to do with National Security.

Hooray for Harriet!

2009-08-09T19:16:00.005+01:00

What a week – not just for me (as I got married on Monday) but also for British feminism.

As I have been on honeymoon since Tuesday, I have had the luxury of wafting around reading the newspapers everyday.

And what I've read is a lot of comment about Harriet Harman, her so-called feminist agenda and what the Mail, the Spectator and the Telegraph have made of it.

In short, Harriet Harman was put in charge and took the opportunity of a smidgen of power to talk about women’s rights, inequality in the boardroom, the horrendous rape conviction rates and other items that our roundly ignored most of the time, by most of the people.

Aghast at this, Rod Liddle at the Spectator decided that the best basis on which to judge the elected deputy leader of the Labour party on whether he would want to have sex with them. I mean, this is meant to political comment!! Don't anybody dare tell me that misogyny in British politics is not mainstream after this!

The pillock from the mail went on about Harriet and her ‘controversial’ proposal to teach kids about healthy family relationships (given how many women are subject to domestic violence during their lifetime, it would seem that many of them might need it).

If I had the patience to wait for my 3g card to load up Lib Dem Blogs I may well have noticed the outrage of all our Lib Dem Bloggers and Rod Liddle’s out and out misogyny, with his little acolyte at the Mail worrying about the introduction of a ‘controversial’ feminist agenda. As it was, before I left the world of wireless broadband connection (aka our hotel at Loch Lomond) I only really saw Rob on a comfortable place, Peter Black and I think Caron calling him and the Mail out for unacceptable sexism.

I have myself been wittering on about a lot of these things, on my blog, for nearly three years now. I haven’t had many misogynists coming onto my site – mainly it’s been the defining silence of my fellow bloggers and only recently do I feel that I am not a (consistently) lone feminist Liberal Democrat Blogger. So, it’s very nice this week, to discover that in the Times, Guardian, Observer and the Indy at least there may not be approval for everything that Harriet Harman is saying but there’s is definitely approval that there should be a strong feminist voice in our country and that is good for all of us: men, women and children.

So I say, Hooray for Harriet, for winding up the misogynists and getting a bit of sensible comment about feminism and women’s equality going! And I say well done the Times, Guardian, Indy, Observer, Caron, Rob and Peter for saying that it's not good enough.

Finally, time has been called on the casual misogyny that so many employ when talking about her and other female politicians, including many, many Lib Dem bloggers – that label and oh so funny (not) play on her name of Har-person! Many have voiced disgust and irritation at it’s use and I’ve never felt that party politics excused misogyny but I leave the best deconstruction of it to, Anton Vowl, at The Enemies of Reason blog.

Anyone who says 'Harperson' should die. Look, it might have provoked a mediocre snicker the first time. Oh yes, Harperson, hoho. Not really that funny, but yes I see what you're saying. That sort of thing. But if you're still using 'Harperson' then you should just be killed. There's no use in trying to keep you alive, because there is no point, because your life means nothing. Now I'm no defender of the woman herself - God alone knows the awfulness that New Labour have brought upon this country, and she's one of the leading players - but calling someone 'Harperson' isn't funny, clever or even approaching amusing. It's just pointless, lazy, boring shite, and you need to die. There is nothing good about it. Even if you think you're using it in a way that says "Oh well if it annoys the lefties then it's worth doing" you should still be killed, because it doesn't; because it just makes you, and every argument you have, look stupid.

OK, maybe, I wouldn't go so far to suggest anyone should die, but apart from that, I feel the same way.

Smile and the whole world smiles with you....

2009-07-23T16:34:00.006+01:00

Weyhey! Mario put my Someone Once Told Me up and here's my little piece to video! I look OK but sound slightly annoying, I think.

The market was working alright, but the banks are failing us....

2009-07-13T10:11:00.003+01:00

Newspaper columnists who use their column to whinge about their own personal circumstances do slightly annoy me, but, even I, if I had a newspaper column would be using my experience of the last few days in the property market to whinge.

On Friday, a perfectly good property chain, where all the buyers and vendors had (finally) agreed a price, that they could all afford, and everyone was excited about moving up and on to new homes where they would find more space for their books/children/lives (delete where appropriate), fell apart.

It fell apart because the mortgage company surveyor re- or devalued my property by £50,000. Not because there was anything wrong with it, but because he couldn't find anything comparable to have gone for that price in recent months. My feeling of the property market on that road is that nothing has gone for the last few months - every flat (comparable to mine) has come on and then quickly been taken off the market as they struggle to find buyers - all very strange for one of the most popular roads in the area that used to be littered to mailings from estate agents in the good old days.

So, say goodbye to the old axiom about the value of a house being what someone is prepared to pay for it!

Nowadays, not only do you have to find someone prepared to buy your house, but you have to make sure someone else has just done the same thing for the same prices before you - so really you need to find two buyers.

And if that's the case, I really don't understand how you are supposed to get an upturn in the market if you can only be valued at what the last house sold for or less.

Of course, it's no one's fault - not mine, not my buyer, not even the surveyor - who to be fair enough has to give some sort of evidence for his decision. In fact, from what I can gather the surveyor is as sorry about the whole thing as we are - well, nearly as sorry.

Of course, it would be easier if the banks were giving mortgages that didn't require a 25% deposit. A £50k reduction in our deposit means a £200k reduction in the mortgage we can take out - no matter that that mortgage is well below the standard income multiplier of 3 to 3.5! In one fell swoop they have made it pointless for us to move. And stopped 4 house sales going through. It's not just happening to me, the same thing happened to an old school friend of mine on Thursday.

So instead of being pioneers in the property market, we have decided to stick with this lovely flat that we live in, stick with our lifetime tracker mortgage rate of with a spread of just 1% (with no floor!!), instead of the 2.99% we would get for our new mortgage and get my partner's stuff out of storage, put a whole pile of other stuff on eBay to make room for it and buy some more bookshelves!!

We'll dig in and wait for the market to get more liquid - it was getting pretty hard to find a 3 or 4 bedroom house anyway - although the beautiful pick stucco Georgian number in Camberwell that we were going to move into probably won't be around when we next attempt to enter the market, but I feel sure that there'll be others!

But make no mistake - this is not about the market failing - we'd worked with the market and all agreed a deal - this is about the banks and their reluctance to lend, even though they have only survived with a big bailout from us, the taxpayer.

The problem is, they now all know they're invincible, that whatever they do, whatever mess they get into, they'll not suffer any of the downside of capitalism, only the good.

New hope for the Middle East

2009-06-02T09:18:00.006+01:00

It looks like, as promised, Obama is going to work on the Israeli/Palestinian peace process. I was very heartened at the end of last week, when I did my newspaper review on the Sky News Sunrise programme that Hillary Clinton had been quite clear that any peace process had to involve no more settling on the west bank - this means no more settlements, no more outposts (which are the settlements that even the Israeli's think are illegal) and no more 'natural settlement' which is the building of new houses for the children of the original settlers.

For sure, Netanyahu and his right wing coalition partners have rebuffed it - I wouldn't expect anything less. But it is vital that the proper behaviour is demanded of Israel, otherwise we are just negotiating with ourselves.

And in Obama's BBC interview today (done because the BBC has a middle east audience without comparison) although he doesn't repeat those requirements as forcibly as Clinton set them out, he makes it clear that he is not, unlike his predecessor, going to be leaving the Israelis to leave Palestine like the holes in a Swiss cheese.

Just by chance I'm reading the winner of the 2008 Orwell Prize: Palestinian Walks, Notes on a Vanishing Landscape by Raja Shehadeh - this is truly political writing as art. But it is perhaps not the most relaxing bedtime read, as although the prose and the countryside that it invokes is sublime the insidiousness of Israeli colonisation and his legal battle against it (he is a property and land lawyer) leaves me so cross I end up having very unsatisfactory dreams!

However, it is well worth a read and I commend it to you!

Bar the gates to parliament and don't let them out until they've sorted it!

2009-05-28T09:14:00.003+01:00

I am very excited about Nick's reforms published in the Guardian today! Especially because they include a week by week plan of action - which is what change professional like me really get off on!

So, here's a challenge to the Tories - if you're so reformist, then why not join the calls for reform in 100 days, real reform, not just tinkering around the edges like Cameron's plans do?

More later, no doubt but I've got to dash now....

More Broken promises, Boris?

2009-05-27T18:12:00.004+01:00

If you live in south east London and rely on the overland train to get into central London you won't need telling how annoying and expensive not being able to use the Oystercard system is.

One of Boris' major promises was to just sort it out. Sort it out within the year! That means by now. But if you live in south east London, can you use your oystercard on the Train? No - neither can I!

In true Boris style (i.e. the bit where he thinks he can just waive a magic wand to get things done) he has failed to deliver on that promise! Thanks to Bridget for pointing out Caroline's work to raise this.

This stinks - not being able to us the Oyster card is expensive - especially for the most disadvantaged who don't need or can't afford to go and get a weekly travelcard.

Now it looks like it's slipping until 2010 - this is no good, no good at all! Come on Boris, just because I think you will, doesn't make it obligatory to be a rubbish Mayor who over promises and under achieves!!!!!!

On Sky News on MPs Expenses

2009-05-15T17:00:00.003+01:00

My second trip to the Sky studio's this week (the first can be seen here) and I'm on to talk about MPs expenses.

Clearly there has been lots of shenanigans and as someone who is self employed and has to not just fill in expenses but put together accounts I know there are lots of ways that I can pay more or less tax. as someone is relatively well paid I take the view that if I don't pay my fair share how can I expect anyone else to. so, no more cries of 'I was in the rules' from the MPs please! being within the rules does not equate to being morally right.

However, can I comment this article by Martin Kettle on CiF to you - because it has to be said, personal morality apart it has been the lack of political will to pay MPs a decent, transparent wage for the work they do. And the vast majority of them do work very hard, about 80 to 90 hours a week from what I can guess.

They are also the first generation where it is expected that they will live both in their constituencies as well as London - MPs from previous generations weren't expected to do that. I've worked away from home during the week, and I hate it, it's miserable to be away from your family - in my case, at the time, my dog; so, I have no problem for them being recompensed for that requirement.

However, they should not seek to profit from it and that's where some of them have let themselves down.

On a more critical note: Gosh! How indignant some of them are at getting caught out! My advice is not to try and defend the indefensible, to shut up and keep a low profile. Not a character trait necessarily in great supply in parliament!

Lads' Mags and Little Girls

2009-05-04T18:25:00.002+01:00

I am glad to discover that I am not the only person increasingly disturbed by the gauntlet of magazines that little girls (& boys, for that matter) have to walk past just on a trip to the Newsagent.

A family friend over from Auckland took his two nieces to the local newsagents in Kent yesterday and swore never to use that particular newsagent again because he was appalled by the covers of the men’s magazines, at child height that could not be avoided on the way to the counter.

‘Well, Bro’ said his brother, “Looks like you won’t be going in any more newsagents then, because there’s no choice. It’s like that in every one.”

I spend more time than is usual in the company of Kiwi’s these days. But it’s cool, because New Zealanders whether in NZ or in the UK don’t consider feminism to be a dirty word and don’t see why those wanting to access porn in their local newsagents whether hard core or the soft (but uber-misogynistic) type pedaled by weekly lads’ mags can’t just reach up to the top shelf.

I was struck on visiting New Zealand for the first time earlier on this year and Auckland in particular how family friendly the place seemed. In London, particularly if you don’t have children, you can forget that children exist. It is not a child friendly city.

But I do think it’s more than that; I beginning to come to the conclusion that it’s not a particularly female friendly city either. I’ve lived in London for 15 years now, so really can’t speak for other places but my kiwi friends all agreed that the UK is not a female friendly place to live – when compared to New Zealand – of course, I’d prefer it every time over, say, Saudi Arabia or Iran – obviously! But just because London is relatively free and equal for women doesn’t mean to say that it is free enough!

Yes, I find I’m getting more and more oppressed by the increasing sexualisation of women and young girls. It feels like, in London if you’re not walking past a lap dancing club, your walking past a poster for one or running the gauntlet of pneumatic young women all over each other on lads mags.

It is not, as I’ve said many times before that I want to ban anything or spoil consenting adults fun. As a consenting adult, I’m no stranger to fun, but I dare sy you wouldn’t want to know the details and I’m not telling anyway.

And I agreed with the Lib Dem stance on extreme pornography and believe that lap dancing clubs have a right to exist (although I think they need to be regulated more and the women working in them could do with proper employment protection). It may not be to my taste, but matters of taste are neither here nor there when it comes to banning things or censorship.

I do believe that the sexual objectification of women is harmful to both boys and girls (Caron has a great argument about this, in this post here); it encourages and rewards women for acting in an overly sexual way.

I think it harms the ability of young people to form, healthy relationships where they can be themselves and don’t feel pressure to act in just one way. And I accept it is currently difficult to prove the link.

But I do get to say how it makes me feel.

Sex and our sexuality is a vital part of our beings and humanity but it isn’t everything.

Increasingly, Londoners are getting duped into thinking that if we object to the pornographic norm, which only reflects one rather misogynistic view of human sexuality, spread all over our public spaces, then we are being somehow oppressive and impacting on freedom of expression.

But right now, I feel that it’s women and girls that are being oppressed and I don’t see why, just because the likes of John Grey or Peter Stringfellow want to maximize their profits, we should shut up and attempt to free up women from low paid jobs, and domestic violence and horrific rape conviction rates, whilst working around it.

The reaction of the Uncle to these two little girls from Auckland tells me that it’s not just me, and it’s not just women who can see the harm and that there is a different way.

You just wouldn’t have to put up with these things in New Zealand, a country where prostitution is legal and it so could be argued is more liberal than the UK. But in New Zealand, accessing pornography whether hardcore or soft is a choice and a place where if you want to be surrounded by sexualised images of women you can be but you can pop out to buy a Sunday newspaper with your nieces in tow without having to.

Boris one year on...

2009-05-01T18:45:00.003+01:00

‘It is a year since Boris Johnson was elected Mayor’ said the man on the phone from LBC.

‘Last year, in the run up to the Mayoral election you wrote a post titled ‘Why Boris Johnson is a really, really bad idea’, do you still hold the same opinion?’

‘Oh yes!!’ said I!

And so I’m going to be on Ken Livingstone’s LBC show on Saturday morning to discuss Boris’ first year. Also on is Dave Hill from the Guardian (v excited about meeting him, I love his blog) and I think Iain Dale, but maybe not, maybe another Conservative blogger.

Just the other day I was musing to myself, as I was digging out the couch grass from what will be strawberry bed on the allotment, that with any luck we are 25% of the way through Boris’ tenure as London Mayor.

I reckon, that means we’re about a year away from beginning to uncover some of the big mistakes he will have made in the last year.

Yes, I’m sorry to still be so down on someone, whom undoubtedly I’d be delighted to sit next to at dinner, but I’ve yet to see any evidence of executive competence.

Has it all been awful? Well no, I suppose in retrospect the illiberal banning of alcohol on the tube and buses has led to an improvement (although, I’m too old and too much of an early bird to go on night buses nowadays) and I was wrong about that.

Boris’ inexperience in running teams showed up early in the multi resignations that took place over the summer. He has shown a crass lack of judgment in warning his Tory colleagues of police activity in the Damien Green affair – or is it that he thinks the rules don’t apply to him?

There’s two other problematic signs in this first year of his Mayoralty.

Firstly, it seems to me that he’s not the Mayor for all Londoners; he’s the Mayor for affluent Londoners. Most of the cuts he made affect those living in less affluent areas of London but would make a great difference to their regeneration, such as the cross river tram which would link Peckham to Camden, the extention of the DLR to Dagenham and the Croydon tram link extension to the lovely, wonderful Crystal Palace.

But Kensington & Chelsea get the congestion charge removed. For sure, I was never a fan of the K&C charge as it seemed to me it was a largely residential area but you get the drift – if you come from a Tory voting borough then Boris is definitely your man!

The second is this dislike of scrutiny that he has. Dave Hill has done a great blog on this but it’s obvious to anyone who saw this behaviour at the Transport select committee will see that he thinks he is above criticism.

It is the behaviour of a petulant child and I have mucho empathy for his mother who must have had the patience of a saint throughout his childhood.

As Dave Hill says, we don’t have free ranging press conference any more but themed announcements meaning that Boris and his hench men (for they are largely men) get to control what is talked about.

But the thing about our London Mayoral system is that he has all the power and all we have, those of us who are not Boris Johnson, is the ability to scrutinise. And Boris won’t let us scrutinise him and that’s just undemocratic.

Still, with any luck only another three years to go...

You WILL recover from alcoholism...

2009-04-14T18:15:00.006+01:00

says the Government, and if you refuse to, then we'll take your benefits away from you! Or at least that's my interpretation of this report on the BBC today.

Funny, because I was under the impression that alcohol addiction had for some time now been considered by the medical establishment as a disease.

My father was an alcoholic. Whilst it sounds rather melodramatic, as I sit here typing in my lovely house, about to get married my lovely boyfriend and feeling rather happy and successful, my father's alcohol addition fairly ravaged it's way though my childhood and left my family exhausted and in tatters. Alcohol had a Jekyll & Hyde effect on my Dad, turning a brilliant, talented and generous man into a mean and nasty one, predictable only in the anger and poison that would flare up when he had been drinking.

Alcoholism, like other addictions, has an immediate effect on the entire family and often work colleagues. It is a sordid business and there is nothing to be romanticised about it. I really would have preferred that my father was not an alcoholic.

It is easy to get frustrated with addicts, especially when you're the one having to pick up the pieces. And I did get very frustrated with my father and was not always understanding. It can feel at times, as if the person with the alcohol addiction is not really trying and if they really, really loved you, if you really mattered, surely they would stop, wouldn't they? They would care, wouldn't they?

And so we have a government who has got really frustrated with all the addicts under it's care because they're not taking their medicine like the government wants them too. Is it churlish to point out that the government hasn't really been trying either and that services for addicts have been underfunded for year? No, I don't think so.

This government initiative, like the one for drug addicts, is both nonsensical and inhumane. It is the behaviour of bullies.

It is nonsensical because there is no evidence that taking away someone's basic income has any impact on their ability to 'recover' or go into remission. Addiction is not an illness that responds to logic. Thousands of people have destroyed families, friendships and careers because they are addicted to some sort of substance and taking away their ability to pay rent and buy food is not going to have any impact. I saw from my father's experience that they are very few depths to which an addict will not fall whilst in the grip of addiction.

People lie and steal, prostitute themselves and others in order to afford the substance to which they are addicted; removing benefits will just make them do those things sooner.

In fact, it could make the problem worse. Addiction is often tied up with depression and worry about food and shelter could jeopardise someone's ability to recover.

But as well as being wrong headed, it is also inhumane, because it codes into legislation the idea that drug and alcohol addition is not to be considered a disease, or an illness, and is instead a lifestyle choice. That people can choose to get better!

While wanting to get better is a requirement of getting better, it does not follow that if you want to get better that you necessarily can get better. I don't know how many times my father got hauled off to the local psychiatric hospital to 'dry out'; all voluntarily and not any sort of walk in a park!

So, from this government that seeks to blame people for their diseases? That we take money off those suffering from mental illness for not going to CBT sessions? Or, take benefits of those who have cancer because they are refusing treatment?

The nanny state has a nasty side, you know. If you don't at least make an effort to get better she'll send you to bed with no dinner; it doesn't take much to turn her into a bully. Or, him, as it is James Purnell that is the bully this week.

Am I being a little soft on addicts because my father was one? I don't think so, I have had plenty of time to reflect on my father's illness during my childhood, teenage years and into adulthood. I rather think being able to blame it all on him would make it easier frankly - trying to unpick the bits of him that were him and the bits of him that were down to his addiction is a complex and at times unsatisfying job.

And, for sure, I'm not suggesting that addicts should not be responsible for their own actions.

An addict that steals to buy drugs, or assaults someone because they are drunk should be dealt with like any thief or violent criminal (albeit with an awareness that they need treatment and that there are good ways and less good ways of aiding recovery). An important step on the road to recovery is to take responsibility for your own actions and the impact they have had on the people around you.

Punish them for their behaviour but do not punish a sufferer of addiction, by taking away the basic income on which to survive, because they are a sufferer of an addiction.

This is nasty populism and don't let the government dupe you into thinking that it's fair or just.

Hooray for Canada!

2009-04-03T17:32:00.008+01:00

At least Canada has spoken out against President Karzai regressive, human rights busting new laws and putting a question mark under the number of troops they are going to send there.

Now, I understand the strategic importance of Afghanistan and the impact that peace and security there can have on our own security. But really? Are there to be no principles in our international relations?

Also thanks to Jaap de Hoop Scheffer, the head of NATO for speaking out as well; indeed, how is he supposed to get the Europeans to send more troops. He says:

"I have a problem to explain and President Karzai knows this, because I discussed it with him. I have a problem to explain to a critical public audience in Europe, be it the UK or elsewhere, why I'm sending the guys to the Hindu Kush."

And that's it, a very good point, our young women and men going over there, risking their lives, in some cases dying to prop up a government that is looking to remove the rights of half it's population.

Great.

Keira Knightly and domestic violence

2009-04-02T09:31:00.002+01:00

If you want to find out more you can click through to the Women's Aid website here.

Cricket & women's rights in Afghanistan

2009-04-01T16:48:00.001+01:00

Sometimes, you wonder that those who layout The Guardian don't see the irony.

On the front page they lead with the horrifying news that Afghanistan is hurtling back into the dark ages (or at the very least, lets face it, the previous century) and bringing in laws to make marital rape legal and requiring women to ask the permission of their husbands before they do a job, get an education or go to the doctor!

Apparently this is Kharzai attempt to win votes from conservative Muslims.

Well, perhaps they should have just said conservative Afghans because none of that behaviour is less specifically religious but more cultural. However, whether is is backwards cultural or religious practices it further serves to undermine the idea that Karzai is the man to lead Afghani's, all Afghanis.

It seems international diplomacy is horrified but apart from strong words doesn't seem to feel there is much they can do.

Oh dear.

However, over in the Sports section, I spy (and admittedly it's a major miracle that I spent that long on the section) in the top banner a sign post to an article on the success of the Afghan cricket team.

The Afghan cricket team has been on a very steep trajactory and have some very talented players. In fact, they struggle to find anywhere to play in Afghanistan and are often helped out by the cricket boards of Pakistan, India and Sri Lanka.

Apparently, it's become really popular because they've started to win and the whole nation has taken to it.

Afghanistan are now set to do well in the world cup.

But I say, boycott them. Would we let Burma play cricket in the cricket world cup? No! So why are we writing jolly little articles about the loveliness of that nice (male) Afghani cricket team when their president is looking to remove human rights from half the country.

I say, hit them where it hurts and don't let them enjoy sports success if they're going to do this.

Am I the only one that doesn't wonder of the irony of these two pieces in the same paper today?

Politics by candlelight

2009-03-31T08:56:00.000+01:00

On Saturday night I was invited down to Horsham constituency (which bizarrely now includes my home village of Copthorne within its boundaries) to talk on my favourite topic of diversity.

I went down there, a little nervous, as I know that my thoughts on this topic are sometimes a little radical for many Lib Dems (although not Shirley Williams); however, I was incredibly heartened by the response that I got and in particular the views of women who had actually been councillors, PPCs or were potential candiates etc. I wonder sometimes that this debate is often prematurely stifled by our collective horror at some of the implications of positive discrimination but in Horsham there was a very open debate and much of what I talked about seemed to resonate with them.

Of course, there may have been lots of people sitting there thinking 'what a load of rubbish' and to polite to say and there were people who challenged parts of what I was saying, but I did not get mauled! I met lots of lovely people and even sat opposite someone at dinner (in candlelight because of Earth Hour) that I had unwittingly been at school with!

I came away full of pride and affection for my home county of West Sussex!

So here is the speech - I also spoke in candlelight because of earth hour, which was a challenge, and added in the odd anecdote or exclamation! So it's not verbatim.

I don’t know how many of you managed to get to Harrogate at the beginning of the month but we had a great speech from Howard Dean. He talked about the Democratic party becoming once again a national party and he said:

“If wanted to be a national party, we had to look like a national party’

So how do we Lib Dems, do?

Only 9 out of our 63 MPs are women.

We have no ethnic minority MPs.

Only 2 out of our 16 MSP are women.

We do OK in Wales for women but in the last London Assembly elections, the first ethnic minority on the list was placed 9th! In a city where 30% of the population is born outside the UK!

40% of our members and conference goers are women but only 25% of our PPCs and Conference Speakers. We don’t yet know how many ethnic minority members we have.

We are a white, middle class party that tends to put men in positions of influence and power. We may have a female president but she, like Margaret Thatcher is the exception that proves the rule.

We cannot, in any shape of form, even in the most diverse parts of the country claim to be a diverse party.

Why in a party, that often defines itself by it's commitment to the individual do we need diversity?

Why does it matter?

Surely, what we need are the best people for the job?

Surely it's the policies that matter not the colour of their skin or their sex?

Well, there's two reasons.

Firstly diverse groups make better decisions for everyone because even the voices of the minority or less powerful groups can be heard.

And you don’t get ‘group-think’

We all like to think that we are compassionate enough, fair enough and objective enough to take every one's situation into account but experience shows that groups of white men, largely tend to create organisations that fit the modus operandi of groups of white men.

And as Lynne Featherstone says in an article on her blog , of her time as a London Assembly Member and the difficulties ensuing were there was a homogeneity of life experiences:

"Nowhere is this clearer than in the allocation of resources, where the macho boys culture so often summons up the massive project and neglects the important details. When I was chair of transport at London Assembly it was starkly clear. Why is it that an obsession with boys-toys – the macho game of who’s got the biggest airport or the longest train – delivers multi-billion pound budgets for massive transport infrastructure projects yet not even a fraction of those budgets were spent on so called ‘soft measures’, such as making sure you can fit a double buggy through the door of a bus and making sure that local shopping centres and services are easily accessible – really easily accessible - through using public transport?"

The benefit of diversity is not because someone has different coloured skin or a differently shaped body but the different life experiences that they gain because society treats us differently depending on what colour skin we have or what sex we are.

As long as women undertake the majority of childcare and the men making the decisions do not, women will be more likely to understand the need for these 'so called soft measures' that Lynne refers to.

Often, those in privileged positions do not even comprehend of the benefits explicit and implicit that that benefits gives them; in fact because the world is designed around them they find it the hardest to see the world from a different point of view.

Secondly, there is the issue of identity.

It is, as Zohra Moosa said in the Guardian a couple of months ago, when talking about business but can be just as easily translated into politics: a culture designed for one type of person that still insists that the rest of us have to be shoe horned into working the same way.

There in politics, as in business, a whole pile of accepted practices and ‘the right’ way to do things. These practices have built up around the lives of the people who are in power. They assume that they will be married, married to someone who will take off their shoulders the burned of domesticity and childcare.

For example, why are all jobs, particularly the well paid ones, deemed to be at least 35 hours a week.?

They also define how people must dress and what they must look like. All a man has to do is put on a suit to look like an MP.

And because the groups in power look so homogenous, they also have the effect of excluding everyone else from feeling that that path is for them or even that they are wanted.

Not just from taking part, but from actually voting for us. I think women who are interested in women’s equality and those of a progressive bent feel far more at home with Labour than they do with us, because of the simple fact that Labour has made more effort to be diverse than we are.

And of course, even if you are not convinced by the need for diversity for its own sake then you should be convinced that diversity or lack of it can have an impact on electability.

Oh, and before we get on to thinking that PR is the answer to all our problems, then we should look at the experience of diversity and PR in some other countries.

If you look over at New Zealand, you will see that the National Party did not start to achieve significant electoral success until their parliamentary party list started to look more diverse.

They undertook polling and the upshot of it was that people were not voting for them because they looked like a ‘bunch of honkies’.

It was not the introduction of PR that had happened years before but the fact they were not electable that made the National party change.

They now have not just ethnic Chinese but a Samoan and a ethnic Korean MP.

It is very easy to put the onus on the group that is under represented – oh but they don’t come forward! They don’t put cards in to speak at conference! Lets give them some extra training so that they can be more like us!

But why should they engage with us when it looks quite clear that you don’t get to the top unless you’re a white male – all but one of the Chief Officers Group is male and although it’s great that Kirsty Williams leads the party in Wales, she’s just not going to have any impact on what the rest of the country thinks we look like.

People often say how politics is a dirty game; not one for those without sharp elbows but is it right that we just shrug our shoulders and leave some of the most important decisions in our lives to those with the biggest egos and the sharpest elbows.

That is not equality.

Why not change the way politics is carried out? Why not make it an inclusive place? Why not make it more equal? Why not provide the environment to create diversity?

So, how do you do that?

Well, firstly you have to make the Liberal Democrats a place where women and ethnic minorities feel welcome and want to be decision makers.

This is more that just having nice policies or the right philosophical background.

We’ve already got those and that hasn’t made us diverse.

So, we have to change ourselves and the way we do things.

We have to make contact with community groups; we have to give new members not just a delivery round but to involve them in some of the more interesting jobs. We have to write about things of interest to them in our Focuses.

We have to hold sessions on the value of being a councillor.

We have to listen to them and their thoughts about how to do things.

We have to ring up those that we know and ask them to be involved not wait for them to volunteer.

These are some of the things that we have done in Lewisham.

If you are not doing these things then why should anybody who isn’t white, middle class and largely male want anything to do with us?

And when we get women and ethnic minorities in the right positions we should not assume that there is only one way of doing things- women stepping down as PPCs outnumber men by 4 to 1. There must be something in the way those local parties are behaving that creates that pattern.

Inequality does not just happen; it requires the exercise of power and Equality does not just happen; surely millennia of human civilisation has taught us that?

And even when we are successful, we still have to deal with prejudice or unwarranted concern that this or that particular electorate are not ‘ready’ for someone different.

But however effective and active we are at the grass roots, we will not encourage diverse members and activists until the public face of the party, those in leadership positions and in parliament, more fully reflect the population they seek to represent.

So I think, we will in the end, have to do more than just encourage and head hunt. I think, in the end ,we will need to use some sort of quotas in Westminster and local elections. We already do for every sort other kind of election, both internal and external.

To be honest, I cannot believe that anyone ever wants or desires positive discrimination as a first point of call.

But if you look around the world the only national parliaments which have at least 30% of their parliament as female are those who have some sort of quotas.

I do not think that we can ignore the only things that seem to work just because we deem them to be unfair to our male, white activists.

Interestingly, I don’t know if anyone saw the article about the Equality & Human Rights Commission in today’s guardian but there was a very interesting quote from an equality lawyer, they said:

"The problem is that 'fairness', unlike equality, has no basis in law. It's a much more nebulous concept. Fairness is not about protecting the rights of those who have experienced discrimination, it's about being fair to everyone, including businesses and white men."

And this is our dilemma as a party – which do we value more – fairness or equality?

I know that some would find an all women shortlists in their area very unfair. Like many men found the process of zipping.

But equality and diversity is going to mean that there will be fewer opportunities for men and white men that there were before.

But it will not mean that there will be fewer opportunities for them, than for women or ethnic minorities.

We cannot have a more diverse party and keep all those people who are currently in power in power.

We have to go forward with the assumption that it will be us and the way that we do things that will have to change not BME or women as a group who have to change to fit in.

Because if we don’t sort it out ourselves and soon, it will be taken out of our hands.

Either the Speakers Conference will come out with something to force our processes or, worse (but perhaps more likely)

we will become electorally irrelevant as we put up slates that do not reflect those whose votes we want and just fail to get voted in.

But if we do change and we do become a more diverse party then we really will have the opportunity to change Britain and build a bright future for Britain.

Fairness is not the the same thing as Equality

2009-03-28T16:48:00.004Z

Interesting that the EHRC (Equality & Human Rights Commission) seems to be imploding. I have to say I was, like many, underwhelmed by their recent thoughts that equality for women might have to be put on the back burner during the recession - surely that is the time that we need the EHRC most?

But I was very interested to read in the Guardian this morning, that some of the concerns are about a shift in focus aware from equaity to fairness. As an equality lawyer saying in the piece:

"The problem is that 'fairness', unlike equality, has no basis in law. It's a much more nebulous concept. Fairness is not about protecting the rights of those who have experienced discrimination, it's about being fair to everyone, including businesses and white men."

And so it seems to me that is the Lib Dems problem with Diversity (and despite some interesting moves forward recently, we do have a problem with it) is because we actually value fairness above equality.

For example, the only way that any parliament has ever reached the key proportion of 30% women to men has been through use of quotas; in our westminster system as currently managed that would mean All Women Shortlists.

That is of course a very unfair state of affairs for the male activists that would like to stand in a seat which is AWL (or zipped with women in front as per our Euro lists used to be) is in place.

I'm not sure that equality can be 'fair' for everyone at all times but we have to decide which is more important to us.

Just a thought....

On SkyNews.com last night...

2009-03-27T10:04:00.005Z

Here's my spot, with Martin Stanford, on SkyNews.Com from last night.

The fact that Lembit is cross because of parliamentary censorship...

2009-03-26T15:56:00.001Z

...is just one of the stories that I'll be covering on SkyNews.Com tonight.

It's a 7pm and I'll try and make it with plenty of time, this time.

Bloody Baby Boomers!

2009-03-26T15:45:00.000Z

Couldn’t quite believe what I heard on the radio yesterday morning: according to the organisation Grandparent Plus, Grandparents ought to be paid to provide childcare for their grandchildren – or get tax credits or whatever!

So, this is what we’re in for, as baby boomers become grandparents!

Was there ever such a fortunate generation? Was there ever such a self-centred generation? Ever a generation with such a strong sense of entitlement?

Baby Boomers are those born between roughly between 1946 and 1961 (pre 1946 they’re categorised as war babies, as my mother will tell you, but I challenge you to find a war baby who was unable to take advantage of the same economic and social conditions just as well as a baby boomer).

As a generation they have benefitted from a health service, social security, largely benign or indeed positive economic conditions, better educational choices and no war.

They are certainly more fortunate than the generation before them.

And they will rely on the generation below them to support them in their old age, like no other generation before or after them will be able to.

Just think of all that capital they’ve got tied up in their houses, whilst their children’s generation struggle with overwhelming debt.

Just think of all the fuss made last year or the 40th anniversary of 1968!

But is all this advantage enough?

Remember when forty became the new thirty? And fifty became the new forty? (Which of course was already the new thirty) That was baby boomers.

And as Baby Boomers become older and grandparents then we start to see demands for tax credits on their pensions and the right to flexible working. Pensions that their children’s generation are already paying for.

Did they do this for their own parents when they relied on them for child care help? You bet your bottom dollar they didn’t!

Gordon Brown, Tony Blair, George Bush. All Baby Boomers.

Why would anyone join the LIberal Democrats!

2009-03-17T16:40:00.002Z

Excellent film

Behind the scenes at the Today programme....

2009-03-11T15:17:00.003Z

For Comic Relief I presume, thanks to Tom Harris MP, for the prompt....not that he needs traffic from my blog.

Public Space, Pornography and what I did on my holidays

2009-03-10T15:56:00.007Z

Friday afternoon at the Lib Dem’s Spring Conference and it's the Women's Policy Consultation session.

We went through a whole pile of topics, neatly titled in the consultation paper under such terms as 'Can we have it all?, Money, Sex, Love & Relationships and MEN!

One thing we got on to talking about in our group, towards the end of the session is the increasing sexualisation and objectification of young women, particularly in our public spaces.

It seems to me that the norms of pornography are seeping into our public spaces, and I don't just mean billboards in the centre of town, but the media and mainstream internet and the products we buy.

The liberal in me, reckons that pornography does not have to be degrading to women; I am largely a sex positive feminist. The liberal me, that lives in the real world, has to admit however that most of it is degrading to women

The pornographic norm is that women are ready to have sex at all times, they are happy to share their men with other women, that even when the pornography involves gang rape, the women in these scenes, though they may be unwilling to start with soon discover they really, really wanted it after all.

Above all, they must always make an effort to look attractive to men.

A 2005 review found that half of all children have logged on to a pornography website, whilst over 57% of children aged 9-19 had seen pornography online.

But they don’t have to go online; everywhere I look there are pictures and adverts involving women in sexual poses, scantily clad and often inferring some sort of lesbian relationship - but not the type that doesn't involve men, of course.

Even the Daily Mail is running articles looking at gratuitous use of sex to promote products!!

The defects that all of us have, including the models used, are airbrushed out creating a standard of perfection for young women to aspire to that actually does not exist.

Lap dancing clubs, able to operate on the same footing as cafes, have doubled across the UK in recent years. This involves naked and topless women dancing at close 'proximity' to men (often there after work or at lunch time). There is ostensibly a three feet rule but in practice this rule is not enforced.

Honest to god, I'm not a prude - I really, really don't mind what it is that people to get up to, as long as they're both consenting - but I do think that public space should not be given over to the lowest common denominator.

They even advertise lap dancing classes for women and my health club - just along from the crèche – when did the work of a sex worker become so aspirational?

I think public spaces should be available and safe places for children and young people; it's bad enough being a 37 year old woman in these times and being made to feel no good unless you're a size 10 (with at least D cup breast, of course) - who would be a 14 or 15 year old girl, trying to work out a sense of self?

Liberalism isn't just about freedom for people to be and do what they want - that's libertarianism - but is also about freedom from harm and I want to be and I want children and young people to be free from the pornographic norm that suggests that in order to be normal you have to be gagging for sex at all times (whether male or female) and that if you’re female or even just a little girl you primary aim is to look sexy and attractive to men!

As a friend of mine, over in Sydney, said recently when this subject came up at dinner - why should we let corporations and businesses (for it is they that run the lap dancing clubs, the porn sites and push the products with the highly sexual adverts) dictate to us what are public spaces feel like? Why should it always be the freedom of companies to make money through sex that wins out?

I am glad to see that today Jacqui Smith has ordered a fact-finding review into the increasing sexualisation of young women.

The thing is, it doesn’t have to be like this.

I’m not long back from New Zealand plus a long weekend in Sydney. Lucky me!

But lucky New Zealanders as well. Because one of the most striking differences I noticed between the UK and NZ was that there seemed no pressure on women to be sexual objects at all times – although there did seem to be a lot of excessive baking going on.

Perhaps, they’ve yet to catch up with us, but I don’t think that’s it. New Zealand is way ahead of us in many things and especially in terms of diversity, particularly in its parliament. It’s already had two female Prime Ministers and 33.6% of it’s current MPs are female.

In fact when I spoke about how worried I was about the sexualisation of young women in the UK, they were kind of mystified - it was clearly not as much a problem there.

It is hard to say which came first.

Does New Zealand have more female MPs and therefore any over sexualisation of women and girls in public spaces has been nipped in the bud; or do more women feel able to go forward into parliament and are taken more seriously when they get there because they don’t feel any pressure to come over like a sex object?

One New Zealander that I know well, is not sure how New Zealand women became free from the need to be a sex object at all times, but thinks that it may be because women get organised in NZ. Perhaps female MPs and groups would lobby companies that wanted to produce overtly sexist and sexualised adverts and products and therefore preserve their public space for everybody, not just those who want to use sex to make money from it.

In any case, the sexualisation of young women and the pornographication of our public spaces is not inevitable; we can stop it and we can say no to handing over our public spaces to those who would be happy with the lowest common denominator.

If you would like to contribute to the Liberal Democrat's Women's Policy Consultation, you can do so here.

By an accident of birth...

2009-03-10T09:26:00.000Z

I was finally dragged from sleep, in disgust this morning, by a report from Refuge and Migrant Justice charity highlighting how UK Border staff had not been following guidelines when dealing with children and that they were often locking them up and not providing them with legal advice.

In fact, when I looked this up on the BBC I saw that:

"an eight-year-boy who had fled his country after his home had been destroyed in fighting was given no legal help with his asylum interview and application.

His claim was refused because of his lack of "credibility", the report says.

He's a child, without legal representation up against adults who are playing at God!

Of course, if this is true, then UK Borders need to sort it out and much is in the training, as always.

But I have to wonder what is wrong with these people, that they treat children, who are only in the position they are in by an accident of birth, so appallingly!

Would they want someone to treat their own children like that?

It never ceases to amaze me how so many people think that somehow that they somehow deserve the relative riches that we live in more than others; that somehow it was all their own hard work and not an accident of birth!

People!

Just a quickie....

2009-03-03T11:58:00.000Z

I have (finally) got a blog cooking on Cambridge University , because I have (finally) got Who's Who off to the printers, but in the mean time here's my slot last week on skynews.com where I talked to Martin Stanford on some of the up and coming sites on the web!

Amazed I got there actually, as traffic was uber bad on the M4 & A4 and I had to run from car, through reception (much to the angst of the security guard), to make up (thank God, imagine going on TV without it) and then straight on to TV - much exciting and certainly the best way to do it!

Except for the traffic of course.

Diversity 101

2009-01-12T18:45:00.001Z

"...many organisational cultures are outdated, having been designed for just one type of worker. The days of trying to shoe-horn people into institutions that were never designed by them or for them are over. They need to reform".

Many thanks to Zohra Moosa, in the CiF piece on Friday. She's talking about business and the world of work but she could just as equally be talking about political parties, and particularly, in my experience of the Liberal Democrats.

Jonathan Hunt of the wrote a letter in Lib Dem News, a few weeks ago, pointing out the parties dismal record of recruiting, selecting and getting elected ethnic minority candidates. We are vaguely better at getting women in to place but we are far from utilising the potential of the 40% of Liberal Democrats that are women to their full force.

And gosh, the letters that have come in since decrying Jonathan's letter! And none of them actually suggesting what we do about apart from inferring it's not really a problem!

Indeed, in the latest Lib Dem News (9th Jan), Ian Hale suggests, by some weird logic, that in Labour dominated areas, where he suggests that most BME people live:

'A capable person who wanted to be actively involved in politics might well take the pragmatic decision to join Labour'.

What he does not then go on to explain in his letter is why ethnic minority candidates should be more prone to this behaviour than white people.

Really!! The letters page of Lib Dem News can be as bad as listening to Any Answers on a Saturday afternoon at times!

It is true we do not have the luxury of safe seats that perhaps the other two parties have, which means that our techniques for getting people elected require that person to sacrifice all including career, income and family in the hope of getting elected. For a lucky (and sure, hardworking) 63 it has paid off but for many more the bet rarely has any chance of success.

I have long been of the view that we expect too much of all our candidates, whether male, female, black or white. We make the prospect and process of being a PPC such a hair shirt that those people who are in demand in their own communities, whether that's an interest community or a geographical one decide they can probably achieve their aims in another less sacrificial manner.

And so off they go, just like Chamali Fernando, and go and find something more constructive to do. Her actions were a little impatient I thought, but she's a loss to us and a gain for some other cause. We can shrug our shoulders as much as we like but, her leaving is still a net loss to us as a party.

Those of us who by virtue of our race or gender find ourselves on the wrong end of power are expected to rise above the fact that we have to work far harder than our white male peers to get nowhere near as far.

What is clear is that all these letter writers are against positive discrimination. Fair enough. But what is also clear to me is that many of these letter writers do not understand why we need to be diverse as a party. In fact, it seems to me that they see diversity as an irrelevance and are far more interest in just spewing out once more the mantra that we need the best person for the job.

But why then, is that person so often white and male? Equality does not just happen; surely millennia of human civilisation has taught us that? And, in any case, who gets to decide what is best?

But why in a party, that often defines itself by it's commitment to the individual do we need diversity? Surely it's the policies that matter not the colour of their skin or their sex?

Well, there's two reasons.

Firstly diverse groups make better decisions for the whole of society because even the voices of the minority or less powerful groups can be heard. We all like to think that we are compassionate enough and objective enough to take every one's situation into account but experience shows that groups of white men, largely tend to create organisations that fit the modus operandi of groups of white men. Take the way parliament works, for example.

And as Lynne Featherstone says in her article here of her time as a London Assembly Member and the difficulties ensuing were there was a homogeneity of life experiences:

"Nowhere is this clearer than in the allocation of resources, where the macho boys culture so often summons up the massive project and neglects the important details. When I was chair of transport at London Assembly it was starkly clear. Why is it that an obsession with boys-toys – the macho game of who’s got the biggest airport or the longest train – delivers multi-billion pound budgets for massive transport infrastructure projects yet not even a fraction of those budgets were spent on so called ‘soft measures’, such as making sure you can fit a double buggy through the door of a bus and making sure that local shopping centres and services are easily accessible – really easily accessible - through using public transport?"

The benefit of diversity is not because someone has different coloured skin or a differently shaped body but the different life experiences that they gain because society treats us differently depending on what colour skin we have or what sex we are. As long as women undertake the majority of childcare and the men making the decisions do not, women will be more likely to understand the need for these 'so called soft measures' that Lynne refers to.

Secondly, there is the issue of identity. Identity politics may be an anathema to a bunch of liberals but I can promise you that if I look at a group of people that I might aspire to be part of and I see they are all white, middle aged men then I will assume that's because the people putting them there only wanted white, middle class men. I am highly suspicious of homogeneous groups in positions of power and I don't buy that it's because they are all the best people for the job.

It is as Zohra Moosa said a culture designed for one type of person that still insists that the rest of us have to be shoe horned into working the same way.

To be honest, I cannot believe that anyone ever wants or desires positive discrimination as a first point of call. There are many other things, that we have yet to do, but that we can do before we have to resort to that. But, we have to go forward with the assumption that it will be us and the way that we do things that will have to change not BME or women as a group who have to change to fit in.

I'm hoping that the Diversity Engagement Group chaired by Vince Cable and of which I am a member will explore many of these opportunities. We are currently catching up, very slowly it seems to me, on the very basics of being able monitor and target diversity but I think once that's done we need to get much more radical and look at how the Liberal Democrats are going to change the way we do things to make being involved as easy for a woman in her thirties with 2 children to look after as it is for a similar man.

A Liberal Democrat Women's Policy? What do we need one of those for?

2009-01-12T12:57:00.001Z

The Liberal Democrats Women's Policy Consultation Paper is up here.

From a quick first glance it looks pretty good and is seeking to address some of the issues that I've been writing about on this blog over the last 2 years; but I shall report back later when I've had a chance to read it properly.

Please go and have a look at it; and that includes men as well as women - any policy on women is going to affect men as well, so better you get your say now and ensure that the policy (whatever that's going to be) has a better chance of getting passed at Conference.

Oh, and if you're wondering why we, as Liberals, need a Women's Policy then click on the link above and have a read - they've anticipated the question!

In 2008 I read...

2009-01-05T11:39:00.002Z

...all these books!

Survivors by Terry Nation
A Fraction of the Whole by Steve Toltz
The Secret Scripture by Sebastian Barry
The White Tiger by Aravind Adiga
Sea of Poppies by Amitav Ghosh
The Clothes on Their Backs by Linda Grant
Asquith by Roy Jenkins
A Case of Exploding Mangoes by Mohammed Hanif
Netherland by Joseph O'Neill
You Don't Love Me Yet by Jonathan Lethem
The Night of the Mi'raj by Zoe Ferraris
Life and Fate by Vasily Grossman
The Rough Guide to Devon and Cornwall 3
The Civil War (American Heritage Books) by Bruce Catton
The Allotment Book: Seasonal Planner & Cookbook by Andi Clevely
The Enchantress of Florence by Salman Rushdie
Last Tango in Aberystwyth by Malcolm Pryce
Black Dogs: A Novel by Ian McEwan
Women in England 1760-1914 by Susie Steinbach
Age of Iron by J. M. Coetzee
Why women should rule the world : a memoir by Dee Dee Myers
The Satanic Verses by Salman Rushdie
I Think the Nurses Are Stealing My Clothes by Linda Smith
Waiting For The Barbarians by J.M. Coetzee
Diary of a Bad Year by J. M. Coetzee
Kingdom come by J. G. Ballard

I have to admit to not having read the Rough Guide to Devon & Cornwall from cover to cover, just the relevant bits for our holiday!

Members of the Speaker’s Conference

2008-12-11T11:19:00.003Z

The membership of the Speakers conference that been set up to sort out the inequalities of representation in the House of Commons of anybody who isn't a white, able bodied man is out:

Name, Constituency, Party

Miss Anne Begg (Vice-Chairman), Aberdeen South, Labour
Ms Diane Abbott, Hackney North & Stoke Newington, Labour
John Bercow, Buckingham, Conservative
Mr David Blunkett, Sheffield, Brightside, Labour
Angela Browning, Tiverton & Honiton, Conservative
Mr Ronnie Campbell, Blyth Valley, Labour
Mrs Ann Cryer, Keighley, Labour
Mr Parmjit Dhanda, Gloucester, Labour
Andrew George, St Ives, Liberal Democrat
Miss Julie Kirkbride, Bromsgrove, Conservative
Dr William McCrea, South Antrim, Democratic Unionist
David Maclean, Penrith & The Border, Conservative
Fiona Mactaggart, Slough, Labour
Anne Main, St Albans, Conservative
Jo Swinson, East Dunbartonshire, Liberal Democrat
Mrs Betty Williams, Conwy, Labour

I shall do some digging next week, to see what sort of Speaker's Conference it is (are the people on it conservative with a small 'c' or will be have AWL before the year is out!) and whether we should expect any change.

On SkyNew.Com in a couple of hours

2008-11-25T17:06:00.002Z

Yes, I nearly forgot to mention. I am doing my more or less monthly slot on SkyNews.Com this evening looking at the 'hot' stories from the web today.

In fact, I'd better go as the car will be waiting for me and I don't want to be late!! I'm in enough trouble as it is, as I double booked it with a School Governors meeting...

Mine are not sexual encounter clubs. They are gentlemen's clubs.

2008-11-25T15:31:00.001Z

Ha! What a euphemism that is!

Frankly, I think the fact that Peter Stringfellow has come out against lap dancing clubs being reclassified, as sexual encounter clubs rather than in the same bracket as café's, is a sure fire sign that it ought to be done.

Don't get me wrong, if people want to go to lap dancing clubs it is there prerogative to do so and I wouldn't want to outlaw it (I am a liberal after all). But I do think that councils need to be able to use regulation to limit where they are. So they are not in places frequented by children or people who have no choice but to walk past the clubs, the adverts and the clientele.

Has any body driven out from Leeds Station in a cab recently? Seen the adverts for Leeds soon to arrive largest lap dancing club? Seen, the adverts for plenty of girls available all the time? Am I the only one who doesn't know where to look when I go past?

Like I say, I'm not a prude, and if men (or women) want to pay for girls to gyrate in front of them and girls want to earn their money that way then fine; but I don't have to have it shoved in my face, so to speak, do I? Or brought to the attention of young people before either they or their parents really want to talk about it? There must have been a thousand 'What's a lap dancing club, Mummy? Questions already!

Gentleman's Clubs indeed! What's gentlemanly about having a lap dance?

If you want to get in the book, you better get on the site NOW!!!!

2008-11-19T15:16:00.000Z

31st December 2008.

Yes, that's the deadline for getting your entry into Who's Who in the Lib Dems Online and then in the book. I will be pulling everybody's entries of the database after 31st December and pulling together all the info for an actual hardcopy book to be available at the Spring Conference.

If you are not on the website then you cannot be in the book; that's it! My final offer!

Plus, I certainly recommend to all of you who want to be known only by Mr or Cllr at the top of your entry and therefore remain largely anonymous to those of us perusing the site (who didn't read the instructions then?) that you change it to something more traditional; like your name.

Of course, you will still be able to add yourself to the database and update your entry as and when but those additions and changes will not be reflected in the printed version.

If you've forgotten your username and/or password, that's fine...there's two links to help you out just underneath the log in section.

You can also subscribe to Who in the Lib Dems Online as well!!

Tories have a good old barny about women candidates...

2008-11-18T11:53:00.003Z

I picked up this discussion on Conservative Home via CiF. I have to say that much of the debate around diversity and why women are not being picked is far more sophisticated that ours. I might also add that they are having a debate. There's always a few 'best person for the job' commenters but many of the people commenting do not view it as just a coincidence or a naturally occurring phenomenon that 85% of selections in the last few months have been of men. Most refreshingly they are actually having a proper conversation about it. We always get stuck on the discussion around positive discrimination, collectively condemn it and then go off to think about something else. And so, not much changes...

There is on the ConservativeHome comments thread serial recognition that the problem is not with women or ethnic minorities being good enough but that the role of candidate (and in their case MP) does not attract good quality women and minorities. That this debate is taking place with the arguments in place, tells me that on the path to organisational cultural change they are further on than we are. Or at least they are on Conservative Home.

For example, they talk about the roles that women are not occupying needing to change in order to attract high quality women who have choices in their life and may make decisions using different criteria on what to do with their life than their quality male peers.

I know that, of all the things I do in terms of voluntary or community work, I make the most difference in being a school governor or on the Executive and chairing working groups on my borough police consultative groups. These are groups that are keen to utilise my experience and skills developed whilst running my own rather successful business and not treat me like a ingénue just because I haven't been delivering focuses for the last 15 years. Many of my friends and family think it would be a much more logical thing for me to focus on those activities.

Still, I am the PCA Rep on the Diversity Engagement Group and I'm looking forward to see how we can make real and lasting cultural changes to the way we do things in the Lib Dems.

My logic, by the way, for sticking with the Lib Dems and continuing to campaign within the party for real diversity is that I can make a far bigger impact on society and equality by helping to sort out the problems around representation in my chosen political party. Just sticking with the current system and making sure I am head and shoulders above my male peers to try and get selected for a seat, and then keeping my head down and quiet, will not make it easier for those coming up with or behind me.

I don't want us to be doing a collective shrug of the shoulders any more when we discover that women and ethnic minorities aren't putting themselves forward for roles at every and any level of the party. I want us to work out why and change ourselves, so they do.

This evening the DEG Target Setting Working Group is having its first meeting. We need to make sure we set targets not just for candidate selections but for MPs, councillors, party chairs, federal committee members, organisers, local party committee members, conference reps and party spokespeople and members. Because we have to start measuring our success by outcomes rather than being hamstrung by a process that we are sure is fair and does not overtly discriminate but does not produce the outcomes we need. Our process may be a work of liberal democratic art but it is not working.

And before you all fall off your chairs, target setting is aspirational, it is not about setting mandatory quotas.

The Speakers Conference that was agreed last Wednesday is going to be very instructive. If you read the debate and look at it's purpose it is clear that the time when we can leave the political parties to sort their own houses out in their own way has gone already. It is being taken out of our hands and parliament itself has decided to do something about it.

Any idea the outcome of the Conference is going to be a commendation of what we are already doing and just a exhortation to try harder would be a naive one.

Nothing is off limits

2008-11-12T10:38:00.001Z

MPs today have a free on whether to hold a Speakers Conference into whether MPs are a 'narrow, self serving elite'. A whole year to work that out! Surely not? Blimey I could give them something pretty substantial in just 24 hours and my daily fee is far less than a bunch of MPs!! Only just though ;-)

Seriously thought it is good to see that the Speakers Conference I firs t got wind of in July looks to be coming to something. So much talk on diversity and equalities in parliament (you know that bit with the power) is just hot air.

Of course Harriet Harman is thinking of gender, race, sexuality and disability imbalances but Michael White makes a very interesting comment about the white working class in his article on CiF. But I guess you have to prioritise and my guess is that there are more white working class men in parliament than say, ethnic minorities in total whether from the working or middle or elite and there are definitely more than ethnic minority women - of whom we have to our shame as a democracy only two (Dawn Butler and Diane Abbots) and they sit on the Labour benches. (there's also the thorny issue of whether you class is something branded on you by birth and something you can't change - which I don't agree with).

I do hope that MPs do the right thing today...there are still an awful lot of Tories who think that Parliament being male and white is nothing more than a coincidence (or perahps, just the way it should be).

My eyebrows were raised, however, by the idea that Patrick Wintour suggests that

"The conference could prompt legislation including a requirement for political parties to maintain all-women and all-black shortlists for parliamentary candidates".

I can't see MPs going for that en masse; but remember, our MPs voted for the legislation to allow all women or all ethnic minority shortlists to exist within the context of equal opportunities legislation, to be extended. The average Lib Dem activist may be outraged by them but not all of the parliamentary party is.

But I do thing that Harriet Harman is right when she says:

"It is not just about how can people think we are a fair, open and representative democracy if we just do not look like that, but also the fact that we cannot have sensible debates on policy. We cannot sensibly discuss the veil (in the Commons) when there is no Muslim woman MP; it was impossible to discuss domestic violence when there was 97% men in the Commons.
"So this is about changing the agenda for debate, as well as changing public perception of the Commons."

Certainly this is why I think that diversity is so important - it is not because of the way people look but for the different understanding and priorities that they place on things. It's not just about getting more women in but making sure that those women have between them a broad experience of life in the UK today.

She goes on to say:

"Nothing is off-limits. It is potentially a very radical, historic decision - it moves the issue right up the agenda, and puts something that used to be dismissed as political correctness right to the centre of the political agenda. If the Commons is not representative, it is nothing. This is about parliament saying 'we are not OK to go on as we are'."

Well, I'm not going to disagree with that..I just hope that MPs with their free vote don't disagree with her either and vote for the Speakers Conference. Fingers crossed, eh?

Women Liberal Democrats Reclaim the Night

2008-11-06T18:54:00.001Z

Hooray! Women Liberal Democrats are going on the Reclaim the Night 2008 march with the Women Liberal Democrats banner!

I went last year with my Mum (yes, that's us in the picture) but there was no organised Lib Dem presence.

This year, inspired by the Finn McKay, from The London Feminist Networ k, speaking at the WLD fringe on Domestic Violence, they're going. Finn was great at the fringe and spoke with real passion but I did smile as she called out to us as 'comrades'!! Not what you normally hear at a LIBERAL Democrat fringe!

I was absolutely chuffed that I was going to be able march under the Lib Dem banner this year until I realised that I'm actually going to be in Bath for the weekend...something which has been booked up since the dark ages. Hrmph!

But, you can still go if you want to!

It's women only on the march, I'm afraid but guys are allowed at the post-march rally.

If you would like to march (if you're female that is) under the Women Liberal Democrats Banner then meet at the ticket hall of Embankment tube station on Saturday 22nd November 2008 between 6.00pm and 6.15pm. If you want to march incognito then the start of the march is at 6.30pm in Whitehall Place.

The rally (with speakers and stalls) for women, men and children will be at the Friends Meeting House, Main hall, Euston road - you can find out more details at the website here!

Boris deserts East London

2008-11-06T13:51:00.004Z

And turns his back on environmental forms of transport....

Well, that was inevitable, wasn't it?

Relieved as I am, as a Crystal Palace resident, not to have the East London Line Extension scrapped it seems that Boris have slashed swathes of budget off key transport infrastructure projects including, as listed on the BBC website:

£1.3bn cross-river tram plan which would have connected Peckham to Camden

£500m Thames Gateway Bridge scheme in east London

£750m extension of the Docklands Light Railway to Dagenham Dock in east London

£500m Oxford Street tram scheme

£170m Croydon Tramlink extension

Public space proposals for a number of areas including Parliament Square and the Victoria Embankment

Given that trams are amongst the greenest forms of transport that just shows that when you vote blue you certainly don't get green!!

And what are we getting instead?

Mucking around with bloody routemaster. If there was ever a waste of time and money and a dog whistle to those who think life was always better in the past then I don't know what is. Boris Watch has more on that point here.

I really feel for East London; Barking & Dagenham is in need of so much regeneration but it's just not going to happen without the proper transport infrastructure. And as for the Thames Gateway bridge - do you htink he's have dared to do that in West London?

Dave Hill has more details on the transport for London business plan here.

Today is the day I start subsidising my male peers...

2008-10-31T16:43:00.004Z

How so, you ask? How generous of me!

As I am likely to earn at least 17% less than them, for work of the same value or skill level.

For women in senior management (like me) that gap widens to 25%. And I understand it's worst in London.

This means I am earning less so that my male peers can earn more!

And before you ask that's 17% less per hour between men and women working full time. The per hour gap is far higher between men working full time and women working part time.

Yes, yesterday, the 30^th October was the day of the year when women in the UK got their last pay slip of the day and today they started working for free, when compared to their male peers. It is the reality of the wage gap. Like it was last year.

The wonderful Fawcett Society are continuing to campaign on the pay gap, as they will until it is closed. You can sign the open letter to Peter Mandelson here. (They have a very handy factsheet which you can view here and is where the following stats have come from – scroll down to page 5.

It’s still stuck at 17% no change on last year. And it’s not getting better, not with time, not with better education, not with the fact that fewer women are marrying and having children in their 20’s.

Evidence shows that we are stuck when it comes to equal pay and going backwards when it comes to political representation and being appointed to company boards.

So what to do? Well, the most important thing we need to do is change our culture where women have shoulder the bulk of childcare and unpaid work in the home. This is not an easy thing to do and will changes in legislation and employment law to allow families to share parental leave between them. It will also require men to change their mindset; they need to be just as willing to work flexibly as their partners assume they will have to. But as with all cultural changes, that will only take place over time.

Still irrespective of issues around childcare, 40% of the discrimination that women suffer from is down to simple discrimination.

In the mean time Fawcett are arguing for two clear actions:

1. Mandatory pay audits which would require all companies and organisations to compare the earnings of women and men doing similar work to see if there is a gap.

2. Changes to the law to make it much easier for women to take cases to court, and to allow women to take such cases as a group, with the support of the unions.

As a Liberal I believe in the market and competition; but when the market is not working properly as a result of discrimination then I believe the market needs to be regulated. Greater transparency, in the form of pay audits will do that. And just like Turkeys don’t vote for Christmas, employers discriminating against women won’t voluntarily conduct a pay audit. That’s why they have to be mandatory.

Getting depressed about Israel...

2008-10-28T16:19:00.000Z

Well, it’s so easy to do. It’s been a while since I blogged about Israel; over a year it would seem looking back at all my posts tagged Middle East. It seems the rest of us have become taken up with the US elections and the credit crunch that we haven't had time to think about the wading through treacle that is Israeli politics.

I've written before about my personal interest in the region. My few months spent in Israel in my twenties, taught me more about different cultures and manners than I had learnt in the whole of my life up until that point put together. I think gruff is the politest way I can describe the manner of the average kibbutznik. I could take it from most, but I did use to wage a war of attrition with some of the teenage boys whom I refused to serve dinner to in the canteen until they said ‘please’. And also that it is perfectly possible for someone to have survived the Nazi occupation of France by pretending to be a son of a local catholic couple in the knowledge that the rest of their family has died in concentration camps and still end up an old letch preying on innocent and trusting female English volunteers by the time they’re in their seventies; suffering being no guarantee of decency (although why I thought it somehow was, I don’t know).

But that was all in the heady, optimistic days of the mid nineties when peace accords were in place where both volunteers and kibbutzniks would work fields side by side with Palestinians who crossed over from Gaza each morning. Where nice, young English girls like me (although I ended up claiming to be Scottish, for reasons I don’t have the space to explain now) could drive tractors in those fields now more used to being a repository for the hand made rockets that have fallen short of the town of S’derot. Ah, S’derot – possibly the most boring place I’ve ever spent a Saturday night. Or at least it was then; now it’s just plain frightening, I would imagine.

At the time, it was my intention to avoid politics; being an International Relations graduate I was aware that I probably knew bugger all about it. And I’m quite proud of my achievement in doing just that. As you can tell, it was a great adventure for me and it created a fascination and a great fondness for the whole of the Levant. I donned my borrowed but very warm old Israeli army parker and travelled to the Sinai and across southern Jordan just weeks after the border has opened with Israel; I was very lucky.

I would not be so lucky now.

I did have hope that Tzipi Livni would provide a new, refreshing approach to peace talks. And indeed I still believe that she would given half a chance. But the difficulties in trying to pull together a coalition in have overcome her.

Truly, how can she sign up to Shas’s demands that negotiations with the Palestinians’ not make any reference to Jerusalem? No wonder, this calm and unruffled woman was driven to exasperation.

Disappointingly I read distaste of, and frankly, a cheap shot at PR systems in some of the commentators’ analysis. But, really? The situation that Israel now finds itself in cannot be laid at the door of PR. If they were to just change the voting system, then all would be alright then, would it? That Israel’s political parties are so fragmented and at the fringes are so entrenched in a lack of compromise is not as a result of PR but as a result of decades of failure of the mainstream parties and the international community to deliver.

Still it looks like she is a leaderwith metal and the Israelis have recognised this given that Kadima's poll ratings have gone up since she called theelection.

I have blogged before about the weakness of leadership in Ehud Olmert whom thought strength was to be found in bullying a neighbour. I also believe the international community has one rule for Israel when it comes to illegal wars and occupying territory that is not theirs and another rule for everyone else. I hesitate toreduce international relations in the Middle East to an analogy of family dynamics but if you let a country get away with breaking the rules for long enough they will assume that they don’t apply to them. There is then no incentive to actually behave within the general rule set out and therefore extreme behaviour succeeds where constraint and compromise doesn’t. And there you have it. There is no need to compromise and apply constraint because war and bullying neighbours has no censure.

On the other side, Palestinians’ have noticed that every time they comply and compromise their dreams move further away. There is no incentive for them to vote for constraint.

My general impression when I left Israel and the kibbutz was that it had the most enormous chip on it's shoulder. This is of course a generalisation and my memories of my time there are extremely fond and so it is not so much a criticism as a comment.

It is hard, given the history of the Jews in the 20th Century and centuries before not to comprehend how they might be so defensive and eager to attack before they are attacked out of existence. especially when there are like Ahmadinejad just a missile's range away.

But, we are all responsible for our own actions, no matter what has happened in the past. Likewise, Israel's politician, of whatever hue, have to start to compromise. To do this they need the help and support of the International community. Not just to validate or to turn a blind eye to the things that they do but to make it clear that they too wil have to stick to the rules.

Some have called Tzipi Livni Israel's Barack Obama, as she too used a narrative of change in her election as leader. Well, whether she is or she isn't, the election of the real Barack Obama to the US presidency could be the bestchance that the peace process has at the moment.

I am hopeful that if Obama becomes president he will pay more attention to the area and the scope for a negotiated peace than his predecessor Bush. In in the mean time I hope the Israeli voters punish at the polls those extreme parties like Shas that have once more put up barriers to peace.

Of course, Israel has a right to self defense! but, the abuse and aggression that Jews and Israelis have suffered from the Nazi regime, European countries and in later years their neighbours do not excuse Israel's actions with regard to the occupied territories and particularly the action of politicians who have very little support but who are prepared to hold the rest of the country to ransom.

Also, in my feminist utopia...

2008-10-23T16:38:00.003+01:00

A man doing his share of housework or childcare will be entirely unremarkable and men who do this will not be considered particularly ‘wonderful’ and they won’t be considered as ‘helping’ their partner….they will just be being a normal human being doing the stuff that they’re responsible for. I will not be considered ‘lucky’ for living with a man who does his own share (and, gosh, even more ‘amazing’, doesn’t wait for me to ask him to).

Women will no longer talk about trying to ‘get’ men to ‘help’ with the kids.

Men who go part time or even give up work to look after their own children will not be considered peculiar or performing a great sacrifice.

Schools will not automatically ring the mother when a child is ill or needs to be picked up early.

I would like to thank Easily Confused for picking up with the ‘my feminist utopia’ theme and running with it. I told you, I had struck a chord…

This lack of surprise will not just be limited to the home but at social events where some communal chore needs to be done; in my feminist utopia there will be men, and even young unmarried men, who will take it upon themselves to be at the centre of the washing up and clearing up and not immediately go down the pub to ‘talk strategy’ once the quiz, talk or meeting has finished. It will be unremarkable, no one will remark on it because it will be entirely normal. There will still be the lazy people who go up the pub without helping to tidy up, but there will be a greater gender balance of those left behind to clear up after them.

Nobody will wonder in the case of women who want to do something extra like get elected to public office, who will look after the children. They will assume that they have a partner of at the very least the children have a father who looks after them when she’s busy and sometimes when she's not.

*big sigh*

Read these!! Please!!

2008-10-23T14:06:00.003+01:00

I've pulled together a trio of excellent posts/articles to recommend to you.

Now, I don’t always agree with Polly Toynbee but she’s spot on here with her assertion that the delay on debating the various abortion amendments on the HFE Bill had more to do with keeping the DUP sweet than anything that the House of Lords could have done!

And a very interesting post (and comments) from Laurie Penney on Liberal Conspiracy. The current Labour’s crusade against sex workers is based on some very dodgy evidence. Links from the excellent commenter Susan Hammond – I started reading a very interesting article here in the office entitled ‘400,000 Swedish Perverts’. Then I realised it was 38 pages long and I had work to do; but if you have the time it’s a really interesting deconstruction of how permissive Swedish society is.

And then finally, this article in the Independent about how to live to 114. I’m glad to see my habit of being generally right is continuing; I’ve always been pretty confident that I will live to at least a hundred and not it looks like my positive and optimistic outlook on life will ensure that I do!!

It looks like identity politics is not going away

2008-10-20T13:26:00.003+01:00

In The independent today, the Tories are using a consultancy called Pretty Little Head to help them attract more female voters. Well, it’s pretty brave for a start to actually build in irony to your own company name!! Although I’m pretty sure that many won’t get it!

But at least the Tories are trying something slightly less offensive to women than the Republicans – who thought that by just putting up a woman, any woman, even Sarah Palin, the 17 million women who voted for Hillary Clinton in the democratic primaries would switch their vote just like that.

No, gaining the female vote, if there is such a thing, is not just a matter of putting up female candidates. As I’ve mentioned before, being female is never just enough to get my vote, you have to do things that will benefit women as well.

So, back to the Pretty Little Head: well, having a quick look at their website, I’m not too offended. As a passionate sceptic of the concept of biological determinism and a strong believer in the power of nurture or socialisation (as it was called over 20 years ago when I took my ‘O’ level in sociology) I absolutely do not agree with their assertion that some of the differences between men and women are inherent gender (sic) differences. In fact, I am slightly worried that they don’t actually understand that gender, the social construct described by masculinity or femininity and sex, which is of course male or female, are different things.

I believe that the two socially constructed genders are different and that we are all socialised to a greater or lesser extent to conform to those genders. I think for some people it is easier than others. Those women of us who possess very strong, traditionally masculine behavioural traits (like logic, assertiveness, confidence) can find it very frustrating to have people make the assumption that they are not there just because we happen to have certain physical characteristics. Where as some men, who wouldn’t be able to recognise a logical argument if it came up and bashed them on the nose, only have to put on a suit to persuade people that there are in fact a very smart, stable and logical ‘businessman’.

Still although we all have masculine and feminine traits and very few of us manage to completely buck all our socialisation we get from our parents, our schools, our workplace, the telly etc, etc. Hence you get research like this that shows women know that society doesn’t like them asking for more and so they tend not to. And hence I’m still wearing impossibly high heels to work every day.

In addition, even if a majority of us do not naturally conform to these gender stereotypes, we are treated as if we do. We are stereotyped: blonde hair, must be ditzy: soft voice, must be meek; confident woman, must be a bitch. And because we are after all human beings the way we are treated impacts on the way we behave.

All of which means, that although I don’t agree with these two women that differences between men and women are rooted in biology, I do believe that men and women often respond to different things on the basis of how successful societal norms have been in determining acceptable behaviour. I think that because masculinity says the zero sum game is good and most politicians are men who have been socialised to think that masculinity is good, then we have an assumption that the zero sum game is the best; when instead, if we were to take a more feminine approach, perhaps we would not think that. And perhaps the world would be a better place for us all and not just those with established power and money.

Hence I think that any political party is well advised to look at how they can appeal to those with a more ‘feminine’ outlook and approach to life whether or not they happen to be male or female. Not just because it will probably attract new voters but because it will make the world a better place: for men as well as for women.

So, my guess is that identity politics is here to stay and we in the Lib Dems should ignore it at our peril. The fact that the Tories are looking at it already doesn’t automatically mean it’s a shallow idea.

Starting to look slightly less like Shirley Temple...

2008-10-20T12:12:00.003+01:00

Well, I think so, at least!

This was my slot on SkyNews.Com on Friday night. I just loved the story about the CPR being best done to the beat of the Bee Gees staying alive!

A chord has been struck...

2008-10-20T11:44:00.002+01:00

…with female bloggers from across the globe…if not my most read posting (I think that one might go to the one where I ask people to come and tell me about themselves in Who’s Who in the Lib Dems Online’) then one of my most networked posts. I was delighted to be picked up in the Feminist Carnival and on other blogs as women all over the world rail against the invasion of their own personal space that is routinely undertaken by millions of men everyday to millions of women.

Ever the practical person, I am wondering what we can actually do about this thing that winds so many women up. Well, I was thinking that perhaps along with the ‘don’t play your music too loud’, ‘don’t eat smelly food’ and ‘get up for pregnant ladies’ notices that are put up on tube trains and buses asking people to just be a bit more considerate, if they could have a little icon for men taking up all the room and other people’s space: a sort of ‘sit with your legs out front and don’t be so greedy’ reminder. I am only part joking, by the way.

Apart from that all we can do is have a collective rant, which though cathartic doesn’t really change anything.

Hmmmm.

2008-10-17T10:45:00.006+01:00

For a few days, or maybe it has even been weeks, I've noticed that my side bar has been dropping to the bottom of my blog below all my posts. This is rubbish!! Does anybody know how I could possibly fix this?

Update: OK, it's miraculously back! Just a minute after posting!

I think it may have something to do with the formatting of my blog posts - particularly when I send them in by email....hmmmmm.

Any thoughts would be most welcome!

SkyNews.Com

2008-10-17T09:42:00.000+01:00

I'm on SkyNews.com again tonight! Why, this is almost regular!

I will be taking Martin Stanford (and the Sky viewers, not just Martin, obviously) through some of the top stories on the web today.

My guess, this early in the morning that Joe the Plumber might make an appearance given there's over 5,000 web references to him already! Although, to be fair, it's not just an online story. Perhaps, RecessMonkey could do me a favour and spark off another tide of labour outrage? No, no Labour conference to raise your profile at? Shame!!

See, I don't just do it for the trip to the Make Up Department!!!!

The final selection meeting, he said, brought all the male judges to tears!!

2008-10-15T15:00:00.006+01:00

Blimey!

“Michael Portillo, the former Tory minister who chaired the panel of judges, said their decision was "emotionally draining" because they initially split their votes between Adiga and one other on the shortlist of six. The final selection meeting, he said, brought all of the male judges to tears,”

in The Independent today.

And what were the female judges doing when all this angst was going on? And what was the other short listed book that at first split the votes of the panel?

Well, I’m happy enough with that! Although my favourite of the Booker Short list was Sea of Poppies ( a great review to be found here - I can’t be doing with reviewing as it requires too much thinking and I just like enjoying the things) I really enjoyed all 5 of the 6 short listed books that I have so far read.

There is a bit of a hoo-ha about a comment that one of this years judges, Louise Doughty made about the male academics on previous panels being more worried about what their choices say about them and their careers then actually picking a readable book.

I don’t approve of generalisations, but I have to say John Sutherland’s response in CIF is more or less incoherent. I haven’t read anything so badly written in a long time!

My view is this – unless it’s going to be an academic prize then I think the Man Booker should be about good quality, yes, but ultimately readable fiction. I am it seems, well read and have read many Booker Prize long listed, short listed and winning novels. I am definitively a reader of literary fiction and well, I know my stuff. Which is to say, I can tell a good book from a bad and a readable book from an exercise in watching an author disappear up their own backside – or perhaps an English Lit Professors backside, or other such contortions that I really don’t want to go into here.

But whilst readability is key to my enjoyment it has to be good quality. I do not read ‘blockbuster’ or ‘airport’ novels and on the few occasions that I was forced to read them (such as racing across the Atlantic on a yacht when we were limited to one book each and I had to read other people’s or just go mad with introspection!) I have found them largely lacking in any real characterisation and proper motivation and so, so, so predictable (or just random – on account of lack of characterisation and a no real though about motivation and a plot that might hang together).

Still, I’m not in any way, shape or form a literary critic – I can’t be bothered with it. I was dismayed when I was 16, as the wonderful, heartbreaking story Tess of the D’Urbervilles was clumsily hacked to death by having to study or critique it at A Level. And gosh, some of the books on previous shortlists have been dire. Often miserable, dense, too clever by half (it is no accident that my favourite of this years’ shortlist is fundamentally an optimistic book). They seemed to be written to be picked apart by literary critics and academics rather than read by non literary professionals. So I have much sympathy for Louise Doughty point of view, and view criticisms of this year’s shortlist as being mediocre as well, snobbery. Whether the guilty are male or not is not my issue. But given that those at the top of academia, as with many other rewarding vocations, tend to be disproportionately male, they lend themselves to such generalisations (and having a quick look at the gender of those previous judges with the prefix Professor, Louise may have a point). There lies another good reason for diversity: you can spread the blame!

In short, this years’ short listed books were fantastic! I have romped through them, only briefly diverted by Roy Jenkins biography of Asquith. If this is because a lack of male academics on the judging panel then I say: No more ~~male~~ academics on the Booker Prize Panel!

I have failed in my quest

2008-10-13T12:47:00.001+01:00

I have almost certainly failed in my quest to read all of the Booker Shortlist by the time they announce the winner tomorrow night.

Or at least, I might be able to finish them, if I decided to stop work at my clients and take the rest of the afternoon off..and tomorrow. If I don’t go to a PCA Briefing and the PCA Reception at the National Liberal Club with Nick Clegg this evening. If in addition, I didn’t undertake the short listing of applications for a Deputy Headship that I need to do as a Governor of a primary school, or not complete the Communications Grid for the Bromley Community Engagement Forum that as Chair of the Communications Working Group I need to put in place and definitely not attend a meeting to plan our Bromley Youth Conference or attend another meeting to agree the process for the assessment centre of our new Deputy Head.

OK, so it’s a particularly busy 48 hours; still, If I just stopped and didn’t do any of it then I might just be able to squeeze in finishing the very, very amusing ‘A Fraction of the Whole’ by Steve Toltz that I am currently reading and blast my way through Philip Hensher’s Booker offering, which I am still to actually purchase if truth be told.

I’m a very speedy reader, you see. So if I just stopped everything else and read for a day and a half I’d be able to do it. Or would I? Because frankly, the Steve Totlz book is very funny and often profound and I have developed the, no doubt, highly irritating habit of reading out large chunks to my partner. It is a ‘laugh out loud book’ and I am not generally a laugh out loud kind of reader (apart from Jane Austen – she can make me laugh out loud).

I feel guilty that I haven’t got around to Philip Hensher though…I will, I promise after this one. But by then I will know whether I am reading a winner or just a short listed.

So, all in all, it’s been a very interesting and pleasant failure. The short list was really, really good this year and the judges have done an excellent job. My favourite so far is still Sea of Poppies by Amitav Ghosh but it really has been a very hard choice and I have enjoyed every one of the books. There is more to this attempt to reading the whole shortlist than just being a literary pseud, honest!

Sexism at Work: It's just below the surface...

2008-10-06T15:34:00.002+01:00

“I was performing extremely well in my firm and as a result took on the functions of a Director. However, I was told I had to ‘prove myself’ before the directorship was formalised and a pay rise given. There was no justifiable reason for this; I had outperformed all colleagues in my department. Shortly afterwards another Director was appointed (formally) on over double my salary without a requirement to ‘prove himself’. To this day I am paid substantially less than all male Directors at my firm.”

So says Emma, a City Worker in response to calls for evidence of Sexism in the City, the excellent Fawcett Society’s new campaign.

I worked in the City for much of my career and as I have mentioned in posts before, sexism is rife. It is as they say in the new campaign..just below the surface. But it’s also pretty prevalent in legal firms, in FMCG firms and other industries that I have worked in. I know that I have at times earnt less than male colleagues and I have lost out on jobs because I am a woman in her mid thirties who is deemed bound to have children at some point in the next couple of years.

Whenever I challenge the day to day low level sexism that exist in my current client’s office: from a group of men scoring the various women in other departments out of 10 based on their relative fuckability to the request of the MD to get more good looking women from the company at an industry function dinner to ‘entertain’ clients to the use of the word ‘woman’ as a synonym for the word ‘crap’, then I am made to feel like a killjoy and unable to take a joke.

It is not harmless fun. It impacts on women’s pay packets (and therefore on the number of children in poverty) and it impacts on women’s ability to follow their careers and dreams. Sexism like I’ve related above also sanitises more sinister occurrences; where, for example, men in positions of power are able to abuse women emotionally and sexually. Even if they don’t get their way, women are often too fearful of the consequences of whistle blowing, on their own career and reputation to do anything other than move on and keep quiet: after all, who wants to highlight how they can become a victim a sexual predator?

Whether you are a woman and or you have friends or partners who are women or are concerned for your sisters or daughters, the fact that sexism at work lurks so close to the surface should be of concern to us all. It doesn’t just happen in some mythical other place or society, it is happening all around us here in the UK in the 21^st century.

So please, can I encourage you to pop along to the Sexism at Work website down load a poster to put up in your office or send an eCard to a friend. Sexism shouldn’t just be something that is always going to be there, we can get rid of it but only if we admit it’s there in the first place!

Oh right, because I was going be able to ignore a book meme...pah!

2008-10-02T16:16:00.001+01:00

Confirming that one of the key issues with me and a career in politics is that I’m all hinterland.

Apparently, and only ‘apparently’ because I cannot access live journal blogs from this PC and the battery on my iPhone is running so low that I daren’t use it to surf the interweb there is a new book meme going about.

First you pick a genre and then 5 books from that genre and then you tell people why they should read them.

My genre is Indian Literature.

India is my second favourite country in the world (bearing in mind I haven’t been to New Zealand, which I am told is the BEST country in the world; although judging by the pen I picked up this morning that is because they have exported all their pen chewers to south east London).

But Indian Literature is probably my favourite genre. It is rich, luscious and sensual and I love it. I could have given your 10 or 20 favourite novels but the meme said five so five is what you’re going to get! So, here we go:

The God of Small Things by Arundati Roy

I often cry whilst watching movies and TV (I’m a very willing suspender of disbelief) but rarely when I’m reading a book. This one made me cry; if fact just thinking about it now I get a little pain just above my stomach. I cannot for the life of me remember if I read it before or after my first trip to Kerala but just as Kerala has a misty, green, dewdrop kind of beauty so does this book.

Animal’s People by Indra Sinha

This was Shortlisted for last years Booker prize and was definitely my favourite of the shortlist. This is a book set in a fictional city that is basically Bhopal and deals with the long, long aftermath of the chemical leak and the cynicism of politicians and corporate bosses. However, it is a very human story of a young man disfigured by the leak and his coming to terms with himself. What I like most is the very individual voice of this young man who is the narrator of the whole story. Brilliant!

The Impressionist by Hari Kunzru

This is a fast paced, fantastical romp and really rather rude at times (what am I talking about ? Most of the time!). But I liked it! It is funny and sad and I’m not sure I actually like the impressionist that much but hey, its’ good fun. It was the first of Hari Kunzru’s novels and it made me look out for his next one. He! He!

Sea of Poppies by Amitav Ghosh

On the shortlist of this years Booker Prize it is my favourite so far this year (and so far I’ve read 4 of the 6 shortlisted books); at least I think it is – they’re all so good I find it difficult to choose. Ghosh is one of my favourite novelists. He tells a really good story and sets them in eastern india around the Bay of Bengal always in interesting histirical settings (and I just can’t wait for the next two instalments of this trilogy – I’m just sorry it’s only a trilogy and not a 7 or 8 book series) and his characters are well rounded and he particularly does well rounded female characters. This one’s interesting historical setting is the lead up to the Opium Wars and the impact that Opium farming had on eastern India. I’m hoping that it’s going to win the Booker Prize this year but then what do I know? Last year the only book I actually didn’t like on the shortlist won!

A Suitable Boy by Vikram Seth

Very long but very epic this pulls you into an old, old country but also one that is hurtling towards modernity. This book reveals much of what I personally love about India and why it is my second favourite country in the whole wide world. He has created a whole world here and it is as big as the real India!

As I said, I have put only a fraction of the books that I would like to tell you about in this genre – and if I were to do it agin in a few days time I might very well choose 5 different books. Enjoy!!

Today, my feminist utopia will include...

2008-10-02T13:42:00.001+01:00

…or actually, will not include that annoying habit that many men on public transport have, of sitting there with their legs wide open whilst they listen to their iPod or read a newspaper so that anybody (usually a woman) sitting next to them has only a corner of a seat to sit on.

I see it happening everyday to some poor woman and this morning it happened to me for the 9 millionth time, as well as the woman sitting diagonally opposite me. You know, women don’t get a fair share of hearing in business or in politics, we earn less for work of the same value and, AND WE DON’T EVEN GET THE SAME AMOUNT OF SPACE ON A TRAIN!!!

The guy who had laid claim to the majority of my seat on the train today was perfectly capable of talking up less room but he didn’t bother until the train got so packed that he had to slightly shift his legs closer together. So, he could have done it all along but he chose not to, despite my rather unsubtle attempts to get him to shift back into his own side of the seat.

The other thing that will happen in my feminist utopia is that when an acquainted man or woman meet, the conversation will not, 8 times out of 10, be one of those one sided ones where the woman asks lots of questions and the man just sits there answering them without a thought of actually finding anything out anything about the woman he’s speaking to. Like I again heard this morning, on the train.

You might hazard a guess that I forgot to put my book in my briefcase this morning (the very excellent Booker short listed The White Tiger by Aravind Adiga, since you ask) and therefore was unable to escape the general daily ordure that is commuting into London Bridge from south east London.

I may think of some other things for my feminist utopia at some other point. They are of course, not the big ticket items (equal pay, reduction in domestic and sxual violence, a real voice in politics) but rather the symptoms of the lack of equality whether financial, political or just plain cultural that we women have to put up with and that many men may not even notice happens. And yes, it’s not as bad, in fact it’s incomparably good when compared to as women’s lives in Somalia or Darfur or many, many other places but still: how hard is it for men to not be so rude and selfish, and just sit with their legs out in front, in this really rather pleasant and comfortable country that we live in? Is it really so hard?

You know, I really think I’ve failed to express how much I hate men who sit there with their legs wide open, taking up all the room on public transport. I shall try antoher way: .Grrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr!! GRRRRRRR!!

Can Sarah Palin be good for women?

2008-09-24T12:52:00.003+01:00

I’ve picked up, via CIF America, on a very interesting blog compiled with material from women, both Democrat and Republican from across America called Women Against Sarah Palin. Apparently, to my great relief, Sarah Palin does not represent the every day ‘Hockey Mom’ that she says that she does. Phew! Although I’m still not sure what a ‘Hockey Mom’ is and I know that’s only because I haven’t been paying proper attention.

I have struggled to describe my feelings about Sarah Palin being selected to join McCain on the Republican ticket. What is not surprising is that she and I agree on practically nothing, apart from what constitutes a flattering pair of glasses. Her glasses may end up being the most popular thing about her.

So, I was never going to find much common ground with the anti-choice, pseudo feminist (boy, is she suffering from false consciousness!!) Republican VP choice. No, Sireee!

But, my real interest is not really in the lack of common political ground that she and I share but in the impact that a serious female vice presidential candidate will have on women, women in politics and any increase in women’s power.

Personally, a candidate being a woman has never been enough to secure my vote; she still has to be good enough. I am aware, though, that what and who I might consider the ‘best’ candidate and the ‘good enough’ candidate may be different from other people’s views. I suspect that my selection criteria are not all that traditional.

And I still think, on any set of criteria, it is far too easy for a mediocre man to win over a good woman in politics. It is my experience in work and politics that you have to work much harder and smarter to be taken seriously as a woman than you do as a man. I long for the day when there as many mediocre women in politics and boardrooms as there are men – then we will know we have real equality!

And even before you get to the point of trying to be taken seriously, there are still many de facto barriers to entry and participation and, let’s face it, good old fashioned prejudice. This ensures that we only attract and put a tiny proportion of the talented women out there into positions of real power. We are much better at discerning talented men from mediocre men than we are discerning talented women from mediocre men.

But would having a female VP be good for women in general? Would her breaking the glass ceiling as a serious VP candidate be good? In the same way that I believe Hillary being the first serious candidate for presidential nomination, has been good for women? In the way that Condoleezza Rice going around the world frowning at male presidents and leaders from all over the world has provided a role model for young black women? Whatever their politics, you have to admit that just having them on, doing their stuff on the TV in the background must impact the way people think about women’s abilities, surely?

Or would the fact that she has been pulled in as a vapid symbol, lacking in experience, knowledge and so lacking in any real comprehension of the complexities of life that she looks for her answers in religious dogma? And like Margaret Thatcher, it is perfectly possible for a woman in power to be no friend of other women. I was worried that because she is one of the most high profile women in the world all her personal failings would be translated into women’s failings, using the same logic as this rather brilliant cartoon from xkcd! (via Feministing)

This has been my major concern. Because she is not good enough, because she is a sort of anti-role model, I’m terrified that all women will be tarred with her brush.

And then I have also struggled with some of the sexism that has been meted out to her. Sexism that is flung at her may just stick on us all. Each time one woman suffers from sexism, we all do; whatever side we’re on.

So, ‘consternation’ is how I would best describe my feelings about Sarah Palin. One of the contributors to the women against Sarah Palin blog says:

“I am all about women stepping forward and taking our rightful place among the leadership of this great nation. However, not this woman, not this time”.

But surely, if we want women in power, we have to accept that we won’t always get to choose our favourite women, like when democracies choose governments and political parties that we ourselves wouldn’t choose? You can’t just throw out democracy because you don’t like the choices being made and perhaps you can’t just decide to wait for women to be in power until one comes along that you can agree with.

Urgh! I am in a dilemma and in a bind and what I really want to know is what sort of heuristic is Sarah Palin being (see the talented Mr Stockley for an explanation of that one!).

What will, come November 5^th, whether she is in the White House or not, be the gut feeling that Sarah Palin’s candidacy speaks to, the short cut that she helps us make?

Does the voter who does not have the time or inclination to sit down and look at policies, or will young people only just starting to become politically aware, look at her and think that it is reasonable and normal for women to be in positions of power and if she can do it so, then so can any woman.

Or, will the most memorable thing about the first serious female VP candidate be that is she a token woman only there because of her ability to procreate and still look good and the Republican’s cynical ploy to pick up the female voters who wanted Hillary to be the first woman president in the US? Will people think that we’d be better off with a more experienced man? Does she undermine not only women’s candidacy but also their role as voters?

Sky.com News: From Labour Home furore to Brad PItt

2008-09-19T23:55:00.002+01:00

One day I will learn how to actually embed the Sky.Com News videos into my blog, but for the time being you can find my little slot on Sky.Com News this evening here.

We talked about the power of the blogosphere versus how political parties attempt to control the media, UFOs, a comparative analysis of redundancy costs, The particle accelerator breaking down and Brad Pitt spreading malware.

It was short but sweet!!

On the telly again tonight...

2008-09-19T11:23:00.002+01:00

Just a quick note, to let you know that I am on Sky.com News tonight, at the new time of 7pm going through the top internet stories of the day!

Who's Who in the Lib Dems Online is open for subscription

2008-09-18T08:30:00.001+01:00

The response to Who's Who in the Lib Dems Online at conference was great. It was a marvellous opportunity to reach those members who were neither in the 2006 book or have found out about it on the blogosphere.

People seemed to genuinely get what a great resource it can be, as long as enough of us put our entries up.

Of course, not many new entries got placed during conference but I am hopeful that with a bit more prodding and the number of people who took away leaflets, we will get it up to my target of a thousand in no time.

Anyhow, the ability to subscribe to Who's Who is now live...it's£12 for Lib Dem members (same as the last book, but so much better)and £30 for non members.

If you already ahve an entry you can just log in and subscribe!

Have fun!!

The wrath of Linda...

2008-09-16T20:38:00.002+01:00

Yesterday was the big Make it Happen debate. But as The Yorkshire Guidon asks: Where were all the women?

As Jeremy pointed out in one of his blogs ahead of conference chairs are supposed to take great care to ensure a balanced debate. In fact they are trained in such issues. But yesterday, on the big debate only one women was called to speak on the platform, with only two women allowed interventions, and one of those an MP.

Well, I hear you cry! If women will continue not to put in cards for debates then what can they expect? The Chair told us at the beginning that in the interests of balance in the 'argument' other balance would have to be forfeited. I immediately realised that would mean that it was probably going to be an all male debate.

But why would balance have to be sacrificed? I could not believe in 100 cards there would only be one woman or that all the women who put in cards would be arguing on one side of the debate. That would be just weird, wouldn't it?

Well, this afternoon after lunchtime fringe I bumped into Meral Ece and Linda Jack chatting at the bottom of the escalator in the Conference centre. And Linda, the star, had proof of the imbalance in the cards being called in the Make it Happen Debate. It would seem that yes, there were far more men that put in cards but of those men around 30% got to speak and of the women who put in cards only 11% got to speak.

This makes me very cross; very cross.

But I'm not the only one.

By luck, Linda had put in an advance question on the Federal Executive Report on the lack of information around Ethnic Minority diversity. On her follow up question she let rip! She was fantastic and thankfully Simon Hughes was in complete agreement with her. Duncan Brack, Chair of the Federal Conference Committee has been asked to provide an explanation a report at the next Federal Executive.

Good; because we cannot go on like this as a party. We cannot keep making excuses about our lack of diversity.

Arguments best left for down the pub not conference…

2008-09-16T16:43:00.004+01:00

I was very frustrated not to get called in the Conference debate on Transport today; my speech, which I've published below, was a good few hours of effort, not to mention the effort putting into looking presentable for the conference goers. I even put my contact lenses in!

I was arguing in favour of the WLD amendment to take into account the experiences of women and vulnerable people when creating transport policy. Two people spoke against the amendment but only the mover and summator got to speak for.

It was pretty frustrating, as the vote was close enough for the show of hands to be made twice, so it missed getting passed . I am disappointed not to have been called but otherwise the debate was reasonably well balanced.

I suspect that I was just one too many female Londoners who wanted to speak and I was neither elected to the London Assembly, nor was it my first time, like some others. Still, given the closeness of the vote I can't help feeling that just one argument from the floor in favour of the amendment might have been enough to get it passed.

This was the amendment:

d) Improving the safety of local transport for women and vulnerable individuals by requiring all
Local Transport Authorities and local councils with responsibility for transport services to:
i) Undertake an audit of public spaces and transport networks with a view to designing
and modifying them with the safety of women and vulnerable individuals specifically in
mind.
ii) Ensure the availability of emergency telephones at transport stations and stops.
iii) Review the position and design of bus stops to ensure they are visible and well lit.
iv) Pilot schemes which allow women and vulnerable individuals off the bus between stops
at night.

And this was my speech in support of the motion:

The motion says that the Liberal Democrats are the champions of the passenger.
It also says that freedom should be one of the guiding principles of our transport policy.
That we should try to minimise danger to public safety.
I agree with all of that.
But this motion does not explain how we would make people safer.
And it does not recognise how men and women have different experiences of using transport services.
The champions of the passenger?
The Institute for Transport Studies at the University of Leeds has found that women and men travel by different means, at different times, to different patterns of locations over different distances, with different people, for different purposes and journeys take on different meanings.

Women are slightly more likely than men to travel by public transport, especially to work, and they use buses more than men.
It also found that these differences in travel are not addressed systematically by current transport policy and provision.
I fear this motion as drafted falls into the same trap.
Professor Julian Hine has found that women are one of the most transport disadvantaged groups in the UK.
That 's especially women with children, Lone parents, older women, who use buses more, and women in public sector housing.
Younger and older women experience exclusion as a result of poor public transport .
And what about freedom?
Women perceive they are at risk of personal danger.
That fear can curtail our freedom.
Women are more likely than men to have worries about their own safety on buses, trains and trams.
The Fawcett Society has found that around four in ten women have some fears when using public transport.
Personal safety is a key concern amongst the types of women I talked about before.
They fear walking in the dark.
They avoid making trips.
They fear using bus and train stations at off-peak periods.
Other people have fears on behalf of women too.
I wonder how many times women in this hall have been told that it is 'common sense' or 'for their own good 'not to go out late at night or take a particular way home?
I know that's happened to me. And more than once.
A few months ago, Labour's home secretary Jacqui Smith said that that walking on streets at night wasn't "a thing that people do"
As liberals we cannot stand for any of that.
Why should we curtail our freedoms to accommodate those who indulge in criminal or anti social behaviour?
Why should we be invisible in society, just because transport links and infrastructure have not been planned with people in mind?
I support the measures set out in Amendment Two
An audit of public spaces and transport networks or reviewing the position and design of bus stops are key to making sure that our transport policies champion all passengers and protect all citizens from personal danger.

But the most irritating aspect was the argument from a young woman from the Wirral (or at least I think it was the Wirral), whose name I can't remember (which is very rude of me but I was more interested in what she was saying). She spoke well and with passion but she was completely wrong headed in everything she said – the Lib Dems are clearly a very 'broad church' if both she and I are in the same organisation. When the conference website publishes that she spoke I will tell you her name but they haven't yet.

She used to devastating effect the two frames that the amendment was bureaucratic and discriminatory.

She first of all made the argument that undertaking audits of public spaces and transport interchanges to see if there were improvements that could be made would be overly bureaucratic and expensive. She's wrong in fact but also wrong in principle. Because something is hard is not a reason to do it…providing for minority, under represented and vulnerable groups is often hard. If it were easy, it would probably already been done but it is not a good enough reason to not to bother.

Then she went on to make what she called an ideological argument, which is fine if you base your ideology on the sort of conversation that is more suitable to be had in the pub than a conference debating hall.

Her argument was that because she had never been mugged but that a couple of male friends of hers were mugged in Hackney (when she had lived there) that what the amendment was doing was unfairly stereotyping women. Because it is young men that actually are the most likely to be victims of crime (which is true) then we don't need to do anything about making women feel safer. That, because she herself felt fine, the 4 out of 10 women who do feel unsafe should be ignored. They are not a stereotype, they are a fact.

I like my policy and my arguments to be based on evidence and not just on the basis of my own experience.

Many, many of the things that I write about and campaign for are not dear to my heart because of my own personal experience. Some are, but I would say most are not. I too have never been attacked in a public place, I have never been raped, I run my own business and am probably in the top 1-2% of earners in the UK. But that doesn't mean I rubbish the experiences or feelings of others, or ignore the work of academics and researchers who actually gather evidence of what is happening.

Which is why when I hear, that social inequality is rising I vote to give tax back to those on the lowest incomes, or that only 5% of reported rapes end in am conviction I campaign for something to be done. And, when I know that four out of 10 women have some fears when using public transport, even if that is not my own experience, I use that evidence as the basis of how to make up my mind what to do.

Norman Baker was happy for the amendment to be included but the conference hall was just swayed by an effective but intellectually vapid speech from the Wirral. My suspicions are that it will make it into the manifesto anyway.

Still: this, together with the lack of female speakers in the Make it Happen debate yesterday, tells me that we still have a long way to go as a party when it comes to gender issues.

Who's Who in the LIb Dems Online going to Conference

2008-09-12T10:48:00.000+01:00

And you will find details and sometimes even me on the PCA (Parliamentary Candidates Association) stand. It’s opposite Lib Dem Image, I believe.

There’s going to be a laptop on the stand where you can come and register and all sorts of help. If you want to question me about something (related to either who’s Who or being a Parliamentary Candidate), I do tend to spend a lot of my time on the stand in any case, persuading people to stand for our various parliaments and assemblies, BUT I will also be getting people to sign up and register there and then for Whs Who in the Lib Dems.

If I’m not there (apparently if you want to be taken seriously in this party then you have to speak at least once in a debate) then I will be leaving a ‘book’ where if you write down your contact details I will do my best to link up with you during the conference.

Things to remember:

We check the membership database to make sure you are a real Liberal Democrat Member and therefore the details that you enter have to be exactly the same as those on the membership database; if you are having problems you can email the membership department at membership@libdems.org.uk. This might be particularly the case if you live overseas.

Be really, really careful with the email address you send us and make sure you spell it correctly. We send you a link to activate your registration to that email address and if it bounces you will never receive it! It should come through pretty quickly so if it doesn’t then try looking at your spam filter!

If you register successfully and are told you’re going to receive an email then you should receive that email within a few minutes to your email account. If it doesn’t arrive then drop me a line.

Once you’re in please, please cast your eyes of ‘Completing your entry’ as you may think you know what should be put in each field but you might be wrong!!

If you had an entry in the 2006 version then you will not find it already there. Alas, I am forced to earn a living and therefore was unable to spend the preceding 5 weeks writing in everybody’s entries in for them seven days a week. Instead I will have sent you a copy of your 2006 entry in word and you can cut and paste the relevant sections into the relevant fields on the online form. You have to do it one section at a time, though.

If you have any questions or queries please pop by the PCA stand at conference where I can hopefully answer your questions. Alternatively you can email me at editor@whowholibdems.org.uk.

Some of these things are already in the FAQs but I will be updating them; not that anybody seems to be reading any of the FAQs….or am I just whinging?

The new Lib Dem website is up: the good, the bad and the ugly...

2008-09-10T16:51:00.003+01:00

Well, on the whole I think the new website is great. I love all the extra functionality around getting involved. I love the fact that all I do is put in my postcode (wow – interactivity!!!) and I get details of my local party and my constituency MP or candidate. And when I do look at a person I get their contact details and the opportunity to offer my help, there and then!

So, all that I am about to say below needs to be taken in the context that it is infinitely better than what it has replaced which was dull and old fashioned and really rather hard to navigate around. Because this new web site is so much better at presenting information about who we are and what we are saying, it highlights the gaps and our blind spots so much more effectively.

I liked the tag list on the right hand side (although I prefer the aesthetics of a tag cloud) but I did notice once again that while we had room for all sorts of esoteric tags we have no room for anything on Women, Equality, Diversity or even more specific topics such as Domestic or Sexual Violence. Do we really have nothing to say on these issues as a party? We talk a lot wanting more diverse people to come and join us and put themselves forward for election both in elections and internally within the party but if I were somebody interested in those things coming to the Lib Dem website, I would think that we don’t seem to be that interested in women, diversity or highlighting important issues like rape and domestic violence.

We have however managed to find room for tags on ‘Older People’, ‘Families’ and ‘Children’; I wonder sometimes if we use the word ‘families’ as a euphemism for ‘women’, which of course if you’re like me, 37 and you don’t’ have kids, it is not and I do not take kindly to those who conflate the two groups.

It makes us look like a party of well, mostly white men. It’s something I noticed whilst I was browsing the Scottish Lib Dem website the other day (putting Who’s Who in the Lib Dems Online together takes you to the most surprising places); having photos up is great, really good and the way to go, but gosh doesn’t it reinforce the idea that we are a party dominated by white men? Of course, it’s not true, 40% of our membership is female but boy, you wouldn’t know it to look at the web site.

It cannot be too hard a thing to make the effort to look a bit more diverse, surely? I mean, the Tories who pay lip service to this idea are much, much better at looking like they care, even if they don’t. Having just had a quick look at our, Labour’s and the Conservative Party Website, ours is definitely the best now (beams with pride) but the Tories’, amazingly, looks the most diverse. I say: if you have to do two scrolls down to see a female face in our list of MPs then ditch the alphabetical order.

Having a lot more contact details of course makes it more obvious when ~~peers~~ people think that they are above providing a way to get in contact with them electronically. I have to say, my Who’s Who is pretty light at the moment on Peers just because they are so hard to get in contact with. When they do give an email address half the time it bounces. This is of course a generalisation and some of them are very easy to contact.

I like the photos of the staff. But really, all that hierarchy? Defining everybody by whether they are senior management or middle management? Yuk! How old fashioned! I think everyone’s photo should be on their irrespective of how the hierarchy favours them.

Lastly, the colour! Now, I’m no fan of our Lib Dem yellow or gold at the best of times but does this website have to be quite so orange?

So really, this is less a criticism of the website as a channel and its functionality but more of the content and the lack of leadership we have in certain areas.

What would I add? Because this does look like a structure that it is easy to add to; which, again, is great!

I like to profusion of pictures even if they do highlight out lack of diversity. However why just stop at elected representatives and staff? What about putting up pictures of those who are on the various party committees, SAOs, AOs, regions and working groups? After all, they put in a lot of hard work all absolutely for free! They don’t even get an allowance and putting up their photo on the website may not compensate for all that time but at least recognises their contribution which can be greater than those who have been elected at times. Plus it would make it easier for the rest of us to recognise them.

I’m not sure why Lib Dem Voice has been left off the other sites…maybe I just didn’t see it. I would add Lib Dem Voice.; didn’t there used to be a link on the old website?

Can there be a link to Who’s Who in the Lib Dems Online…or is that just too cheeky?

I would also put in a section for Lib Dems in the media. Lots of Lib Dems write in various media whether local, press, online or on the TV. For example, James Graham regularly writes in Comment is Free and is billed as a Lib Dem, as is Olly Kendall. I am billed as a Lib Dem when I do a regular slot on Sky.Com News (even though what I go on to talk about is rarely about the Lib Dems). This need not be set up as a feed and the web site could be selective about what it puts up. Of course, not all Lib Dems are open about their membership and I think they would have to be asked but raising our profile in the media shouldn’t just be about our elected representatives.

Well done Mark, well done everybody involved!!!

Man Booker Short List Out

2008-09-09T22:50:00.001+01:00

The short list is out for the Man Booker Prize 2008 and it's rather a surprising one.

The White Tiger by Aravind Adiga (Atlantic)
The Secret Scripture by Sebastian Barry (Faber & Faber)
Sea of Poppies by Amitav Ghosh (John Murray)
The Clothes on Their Backs by Linda Grant (Virago)
The Northern Clemency by Philip Hensher (Fourth Estate)
A Fraction of the Whole by Steve Toltz (Hamish Hamilton)

I'm a bit surprised that Rushdie's the Enchantress of Florence wasn't in there; it's turned out to be my favourite Rushdie.

But I'm not too bothered though as I'd already decided that 'Sea of Poppies' by Amitav Ghosh was my favourite so far (I've finished 5 of the Booker Long List but have recently been distracted from my mission to read the whole long list by the announcement of the winner in October by Roy Jenkins' biography of Asquith).

Sea of Poppies is classic Ghosh a wonderful swirling saga with great plot and wholly realistic and generally quite likeable characters. It's going to be the first of the Ibis Trilogy and I'm glad to here Ghosh has already started working on the second!

The only other off the short list that I have already read is Linda Grant with a book well worth its place on the short list. If it wasn't for Sea of Poppies it would have been my favourite of the five I have read.

Right, Roy and Herbert are going to have to take back seat for a bit, whilst I polish off the other 4 novels on the short list. I think I'll start with Sebastian Barry. Tonight.

40 bloggers on Who's Who in the Lib Dems Online...

2008-09-08T18:47:00.000+01:00

…but more needed! And all those shortlisted for the LDV Blogger Awards need to make sure they update their entry toute suite!!

In fact more of everybody needed and especially women as only 19% of those who have either registered or added their entry are women! Bearing in mind women make up 40% of Lib Dem membership that’s pants!! So, if you know any female Lib Dem members please drop them a link to the site and encourage them to add their entry!

Still, if we’re doing analysis by groups then women as a group are much, much better than parliamentarians (peers being the worst) at registering and adding their entries. Though, I am pleased to say that probably our busiest parliamentarian our leader Nick Clegg has managed to find the time to gather together his membership number and register for the site! Which is a great relief to me, I can tell you.

So, if you haven’t done so already then please click through to Who’s Who in the Lib Dems Online and register. It’s very easy if you follow the instructions on ‘How to Register’!!

Things to remember:

Once you’re in please, please cast your eyes of ‘Completing your entry’ as you may think you know what should be put in each field but you might be wrong!!

If you have any questions or queries please pop by the PCA stand at conference where I can hopefully answer your questions – I won’t be on the stand permanently but if you leave your details there I will be able to get in contact with you. Alternatively you can email me at editor@whowholibdems.org.uk.



Carnival of Feminists
2008-08-22T08:52:00.000+01:00
The latest Carnival of Feminists is up at The Mind of Genevieve, including my post on what should be included in 'men's' issues but isn't. from last week.

She includes a blog from Alas, a blog (yes, again, the fantasitc alas, a blog) looking into some Wrangler adverts that seem to make a woman's dead body chic.  It is just unbelievable....


Put your entry on Who's Who in the Lib Dems Online...now!! (please)
2008-08-21T08:42:00.001+01:00
  Thanks to the hard work of Chris Phillips and Bob I can now announce that of Who’s Who in the Lib Dems Online is ready for you all to add your entries.
  Putting your entry on Who’s Who in the Lib Dems is entirely free and the only requirement we have is that you are a member of the Liberal Democrats.  If you’re not you would like to join you can do so here.
  For those of you who are already Lib Dem members then please go ahead and place an entry here.
  No, doubt a number of you will have already had an entry in the 2006 print version; if you did and you don’t want to start from scratch then email me here and if I haven’t done so already, as I am about to start sending them out to all those who have been registering an interest, I will send you out a copy of your old entry.  Unfortunately, I cannot update your old entry for you; you have to register with your postcode, email and membership number and I won’t know those.  However, this does mean that you can update it, when things change, as soon as they change.  Plus I have to actually earn a living at some point.
  We will be launching the subscription service at the September Conference so the sooner you add your entry on Who’s Who in the Lib Dems Online, the more often people will read about you then. And anyway, there’s plenty of opportunity for you to tell people about your blog there!
  Do not worry if you are not going to conference, you can still subscribe and we will let you know when you can.  
  One of the reasons I wanted to put Who’s Who in the Liberal Democrats Online rather than just print it in hard copy once again is that I though a searchable Who’s Who would be an invaluable resource for all of us, whether campaigning, creating policy or looking for experts in a particular subject.  The more people sign up and add entries the more valuable it becomes.  Who’s Who in the Lib Dems is not just for Parliamentarians and the great and the good, they are already covered in the Lib Dems website (and even better on the new Lib Dem website that will be coming soon and I’ve had a sneak preview of).  No, Who’s Who in the Lib Dems is also for the rest of us, who whilst happy to do our bit and deliver focuses, would like the rest of the party to know that we can do more than that and our experience , skills and knowledge outside the party may be of use, if only somebody would listen!  Well, here at Who’s Who in the Lib Dems online, we’re listening.  So please, add an entry, whether you’re a parliamentarian, a member of staff, a councillor, a party office, a blogger, an activist or a member who wants to stand up and be counted.
  And if you’re sitting there, reading this you can be sure that you are just the sort of person that people will want to read about in Who’s Who in the Lib Dems online!
    Who’s Who Online is published by the Liberal Democrats Parliamentary Candidates Association; a print version will be published in 2009.
 


VEEP Hysteria: Who will it be?
2008-08-20T16:52:00.001+01:00
  It’s all getting rather exciting over in the US with rumours aplenty that Barack Obama will be announcing his VP running mate in the next 24 hours, or 48 hours, on Saturday, Friday or shortly depending on who you are reading.
   
  There’s also some significant rumours courtesy of an advertising blog, that it will be Kathleen Sebelius because of some leak that an ad agency is working on the Obama/Sebelius marketing etc.  This is all to be taken with a major pinch of salt because, well, it’s just a rumour but it would be really great if Sebelius was his running mate. Still, the Daily Kos has seen fit to mention the rumour!  As I wrote a couple of months ago, Hillary isn’t the only woman in the Democratic Party.  It would be fantastic to have such a diverse ticket.  What a message that would send to the world!
   
  Kind of makes our very white, male dominated politics look dull, dull, dull.
  



I told you he didn't have the experience: No 374
2008-08-19T19:13:00.007+01:00
The word being used, repeatedly, by everyone over at Boriswatch is chaos. Boris' team at City Hall is in chaos following Tim Parker's resignation.  Personally, I prefer inexperience and incompetence.  although I agree that special mix of inexperience and incompetence that is Boris could be pretty chaotic.

On the other hand, maybe chaos is the most zippy, easy way of framing Boris' administration.  Let's hope he doesn't embody it too much, eh?

Boris Johnson is without doubt an intelligent and educated man.  But he's never managed a billion pound budget before and his people management skills are non existent.

So, I was right and all you lot that said he'd be fine are wrong.  I really am thinking of renaming this blog Cassandra...I really am. FFS...this is London we're talking about and we have this man in charge just because he looks fun!